Saturday, 30 June
2012
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| La Puerta de Europa |
To compensate for the fact that we went to bed so early the
night previous, we woke up a bit early to get out into the city and see things.
Our first stop was la Puerta de Europa (the Port of Europe). The description
that I read of it online called it the gates to Europe, so I guess in that way,
it’s kind of like the St. Louis Arch and how it’s the “Gateway to the West.” I
was expecting to have to walk a bit after we got off the metro, we came up out
of the underground and it was right there along with a golden obelisk and a
monument to a Spanish architect, whose name I cannot remember. La Puerta de
Europa is really impressive because it is to building made of metal and glass
that slant in towards each other. It really does look like a gate of some sort.
After la Puerta de Europa, we decided to be orderly and work
our way back into the city, so our next stop was la Plaza de Dos de Mayo (the
Plaza of May the 2nd). I wasn’t quite sure what it was going in, but
people online said it was worth going to, so we went. Unfortunately, it was
kind of bust. There really wasn’t much there aside from a brick arch and a
statue. There were also tents for some kind of market, so I think maybe people
recommended it more for the market than for the actual plaza itself. Following
that plaza, we headed to yet another plaza, la Plaza de España (the Plaza of
Spain). The name made me think that it would be large and impressive, but not
so much. Once again, there wasn’t really a whole lot aside from a statue. On
top of that, it was gay pride weekend in Madrid, so they were setting up stuff
for that in the plaza, which kind of diminished the effect.
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| El Campo del Moro |
Following all the plazas, we decided to try our luck with a
park since we had enjoyed the park so much the day before. We were looking for
el Campo del Moro, but all we could find was this park that was more concrete
than plants where they had inflatable soccer fields set up. So obviously that
wasn’t the right place. We wandered about a bit, thinking we might find the
park eventually, and we ended up running into la Puente de Segovia (the Bridge
of Segovia), which is a bridge built in the 1500s. It looks a bit like an
aqueduct with all its arches. We walked across the bridge and actually ended up
finding el Campo del Moro, which was lush with vegetation. It actually runs
right up to the back of the Royal Palace we had seen the day before, so we were
able to see the Palace from the backside as well as the beautiful gardens.
By that time, it was lunchtime, and we had been walking for
a while on top of all the walking we had done the day before, so we decided to
take a break and eat. The place that we ended up going had wifi, so we were
able to check in with civilization, as it was the first time we had had access
to the Internet in two days.
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| Las Cibeles |
After resting our feet for a while, we headed back into the
city to see some more things. The next thing on our list was las Cibeles (I’m
not sure what that translates to), which is this really cool round about with
pretty buildings and a cool statue. Pretty buildings, statues, and fountains
were our favorite thing to do in Madrid because they were free, but also
interesting.
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| La Biblioteca Nacional |
Next, we headed over to la Biblioteca Nacional de España
(the Spanish National Library). The building itself was really impressive and
had a lot of statues of famous Spanish authors, such as Miguel Cervantes, who
wrote Don Quixote. Unfortunately, on Saturdays, the library closes at 2:00, and
we got there around 3:30, so we weren’t able to go in. We weren’t too
devastated though because we didn’t think we would get that much out of it
since everything was probably going to be in Spanish.
The last place we visited in Madrid was la Gran Vía
(basically the equivalent of “Main Street” in English), which is a huge street
full of shopping and pretty buildings. As I mentioned before, it was gay pride
weekend in Madrid when we were there, and it just so happened that a huge
celebration was going on when we got there. There were so many people that we
had a hard time pushing ourselves through the crowd into the McDonald’s just to
go to the bathroom. I didn’t really get to see Gran Vía because there were so
many people. It was definitely an experience!
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