Turning 21, being laughed at by locals, and Ronaldo’s abs

[Taken from my blog at madridmemories.wordpress.com].

It’s been a busy few weeks here!

Let’s start off with 14th February. I spent Valentine’s Day with Social Erasmus giving out free hugs in central Madrid, because singletons need love too, and maybe strangers are our best bet. Singleness jokes aside, though, it was really nice giving hugs to older people and seeing how much they appreciated it. I guess when you get older, you don’t necessarily have as much human contact as many of us enjoy every day.

In the evening, there was a parade and fireworks display for Carnaval, an ongoing carnival preceding Lent, which I’ve discovered is celebrated in many countries but not England. The parade involved a tribute to Cervantes’ Don Quijote, and the fireworks display was pretty good, too. There were lots of people, and I don’t think my photos do justice to experiencing them first hand (but that has not stopped me including a photo here).

The following day, I was ESN-ing again, this time on a day-trip to Toledo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s a tiny city based in the larger province of the same name, a little outside Madrid. Central Toledo had a lovely relaxed and peaceful atmosphere, and it’s easy to see how it came to be known as the “ciudad de las tres culturas” (“the city of the three cultures”). It has this name because it has historically seen the peaceful coexistence of Christians, Jews and Muslims, which is also evident in the architecture and design of each “quarter”.

One of Toledo’s gastronomic specialities is marzipan, which I don’t like, but decided to try anyway (still didn’t like it, for the record). They come in many different shapes and sizes, and there is even a marzipan house (the size of a dolls’ house, don’t make the same mistake as I did and think it was a full sized house).

Skip forward a few days and we get to my 21st birthday! After classes, I went to the airport to collect Jess, a friend from uni, who came to visit me from her year abroad in France, just days after her own birthday. The day after she arrived, we went to celebrate with other Madrid friends at an ESN party at La Lupe de las Huertas, followed by a night in Kapital (7-storey “mega-club”) after the bouncers finally accepted our free entrance codes! The different floors have different types of music, and there’s even a karaoke floor. A load of us singing “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls was probably one of the highlights of the night.

We ate quite a lot of tapas the next day and during Jess’s stay in general. My only comment here is that some tapas places are better than others – if you’re in Madrid, I would recommend Tapa Tapa off Gran Vía, and I would not recommend places that have to hire someone to stand outside them bringing in customers (maybe these places aren’t not all bad but on this occasion we ended up going to McDonald’s to fill the void that the cold, underdone tapas failed to).

We also went to Parque del Retiro, a lovely big park in Madrid, and hired a little rowing boat. Unfortunately, the rower faces backwards so the other person has to warn them of incoming danger. Half of the time, this was my job, and I failed to notice the big motorised boat towering over us (which luckily had better steering than us) and also the fountain that we proceeded to row under, getting very wet in the process. Maybe Jess would have noticed if she hadn’t been taking pictures of a duck. In my defence, I did notice it but it was too late. We just had to shield our phones/cameras and embrace the shower. We got laughter, applause and a spot of banter from the people sitting by the lake – they probably think we’re stupid guiris (foreigners) – which is a fair judgment based on these events.

There is a wax museum in Madrid (Museo de Cera at Plaza de Colón), and we decided to go and check it out . The tickets were 17€ each, which I thought was a bit steep, but nothing compared to Madame Tussauds in London. We started off on a tren del terror and then proceeded to look at and extensively photograph the waxworks. Having never been to a wax museum before, I don’t know how they compare to, for example, Madame Tussauds. What I do know is that they sculpted Ronaldo’s abs but didn’t colour them in the same colour as the parts of his body that are actually supposed to be on show. Not that I was checking fake Ronaldo’s abs or anything. I had a great time, and took many photos with my new selfie stick (thanks to Cat for that gift!).

Overall, I had a great birthday week, which I was lucky enough to spend with friends – new and old.

Chao for now!