Trip to Madrid

This past weekend, we had a 4-day weekend in Alicante, but unlike a lot of the other holidays, this one was just celebrated in Alicante, and nowhere else in Spain.
Thursday was the festival of Santa Faz, celebrating a saint in the small town of San Juan, which is one of the small towns surrounding Alicante that are basically part of Alicante.

Anyways, I decided to take advantage of having a 4-day weekend. I'd been talking with several other exchange friends that I'd gotten close to on the Italy trip about traveling to Madrid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands, and Evan and I figured out Santa Faz would be a great weekend for me to go up to Madrid and stay with him.

Thursday, I went up to Madrid by train and Evan met me at the station. Since I'd packed light, we decided to walk around the area, which luckily the train station is fairly centrally placed in relation to many sights in Madrid. We went to Plaza de Cibeles, Puerta de Alcala, Retiro Park and the lagoon there, and finally we went into the Prado Museum, taking advantage of the free entry after 6PM. I saw "La Rendición de Breda" and "Las Meninas" by Velazquez and "El 3 de Mayo" by Goya among other works. After the Prado, we headed to Evan's house to get me settled in.

The lagoon in Retiro Park.

Friday, we woke up and headed back to the train station to catch the train to Toledo. Ever since I'd gotten to Spain, Toledo has been on my list of destinations, and since it's 30 minutes from Madrid by train, I made sure to get there while I could.
We spent the morning wandering around Toledo, stopping at various sites on the map from an Info booth. Toledo is a small, old town, but it is very well-preserved. We also stopped along at a lot of the stores we saw, as I was on the hunt for the perfect sword. Between many of my hobbies and interests (fencing, history, etc.), ever since I've known I was going to Spain, I knew I wanted to buy a sword from Toledo, because it would be the perfect souvenir for me. And in the end, I found one!

Toledo.

My sword.

Saturday, we spent hitting some more sites, such as the Plaza de España, Plaza de Castilla, and Puerta del Sol.

Plaza de Castilla.

Saturday afternoon, we met up with Ariel, another (non-Rotary) exchange student that lives near Evan and we went to a "recorte de toros," which isn't the same as a "corrida de toros." The corridas are the typical bullfights, like what everyone thinks of, but the recortes are like junior/training bullfights. All the recortadores (the people) do is dodge the bull. It was pretty amazing. One of them kept jumping over the bull and another was so close when he dodged that the bull ripped his pants (but he didn't get hurt, just his pants)!!!









Sunday, we met up with Stephen, another Rotary exchange student in Madrid at El Rastro, the biggest, most well-known street market in Madrid. After wandering around and getting lost in the surprising vastness of the market, we stopped off at the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and the cathedral and then headed to Plaza Mayor, two sites I'd gotten to see briefly the only other time I'd been in Madrid. We stopped at a kebab (a Turkish restaurant) for lunch and then it was time to go. We headed back to Evan's house, I collected my things and thanked him for having me and it was time to head to the train station and go home to Alicante.

Currently listening to:
Song: Next Year
Artist: Foo Fighters
Album: There Is Nothing Left To Lose

Semana Santa => Holy Week

Holy Week is a big deal here in Spain. Starting with Palm Sunday, there are processions and concerts and all kinds of things all week. Most of Spain has vacation that week, but here in Alicante we also have a festival for San Vicente on the 20th, so our vacation goes from Maudy Thursday until the 20th. Which following that we have another break pretty quickly for a saint in San Juan. But I digress.

For Palm Sunday, Elena got in touch with Pep's mother and the other relatives in Elche, about 30 minutes or so south of Alicante so I could go see the parade for Palm Sunday there. Elche has a lot of palm trees and even a park full of palms that has been named a Patrimony of Humanity by the UN. So needless to say, they are quite skilled when it comes to palms. Whether it be giant staffs with everything from baskets of flowers or statues of the Virgin all entirely made of woven palms or brooch like pieces ranging from flowers to leaves to crosses and many other things. Sadly, it started raining and the procession was canceled, so it was good I happened to stumble upon it on my way to meet up with cousin Pablo. The Iaia (grandma) Remy said it's the first time she can ever remember the procession being rained out, so I apologized. haha
We went into the church to see some of the palms and then had lunch and Palbo took me home.

Above and below: photos from the procession for Palm Sunday in Elche.

I really didn't watch any of the processions, but while I was out and about one day, I stumbled upon one and it kinda freaked me out. Here's why:
Yes, they look like the KKK. But the outfit has something to do with sinners and the KKK actually ripped the idea from this. Anyway, the processions last several hours each and they wind through the city center, where the main streets are cut off from traffic after a certain hour of the day.
I also happened to be very lucky this year. We just formed a Rotaract club here in Alicante and thanks to the brother of one of the members, we were offered the chance to be costeleros in a procession. The costeleros carry the statues of Christ or the Virgin in the processions. Here's the one we carried:

In the photo below, you can see me in the back of the third row from the right. I'm the only one not looking straight ahead, but I'm looking at the camera.

It was massively heavy, even with almost 50-60 people carrying it, but luckily we stopped like almost every block. We also had to stop to change: some people to better distribute the burden, but mainly to switch the front and back groups. Depending if we were going uphill or downhill changed where the "short" group and the "tall" group were. Our procession, of the Convent of the Monks of the Holy Blood, started at 9:15 or so and we didn't get back until around midnight. It was crazy. But it was a memorable experience and one that not many people have, so it was worth all the effort and the sore back, side, kidneys, neck, and shoulder the next few days.

Un abrazo,
Erik

Currently listening to:
Song: Jueves
Artist: La Oreja de Van Gogh
Album: A Las Cinco en el Astoria