Trip to London: Part 1

Buckingham Palace

The weekend after Semana Santa, Christi, Tucker and I traveled to London. Seeing how all three of us had been there before, the main attraction was going to be the tour of the sets of Harry Potter at Warner Bros. Studios, but that’s for an upcoming post.

Red telephone booth with Big Ben in the background.

We flew out on Friday afternoon and basically just took Friday evening to get settled into out hostel and buy groceries for lunches for the upcoming days.

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben

Saturday we walked around all the typical tourist sights: Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and in the afternoon took a ride in the London Eye. The London Eye is basically just a huge Ferris wheel with enclosed pods. I have always wanted to do this, so I was really excited. It was cloudy and a bit rainy that day, but it was still really cool to see the skyline of London from high up.

Parliament building

Trafalgar Square

There was also this random group of people riding bikes while wearing period clothing.

The London Eye!

On the London Eye

View from the Eye of The Shard, a building recently featured in an episode of Doctor Who.

 Then we popped into Tate Modern for a little bit, went across Millennium Bridge, and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral before eating Chinese buffet for supper, which, seriously, tasted like heaven. I miss Chinese food so much!

On the Millennium Bridge with St. Paul's in the background.

Semana Santa: El Escorial and Madrid: Part 3

Friday of Spring Break, Christi and I took a bus out of Madrid to El Escorial. King Felipe II built it as a palace, convent, and a burial place for his father, Carlos V. It is now the burial place for all the Spanish royalty. It's a very big building and we were able to see the living quarters, the crypt and the church. Unfortunately, photos were not allowed inside, so all I have is this picture of the outside.

Saturday was our final day in Madrid. It was a beautiful day and we started out going to Buen Retiro Park. Along the way we passed this book market.

In the park we saw Fountain of the Fallen Angel which reminded us a bit of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, Velázquez Palace that hosts a rotating art exhibit some of which we weren't sure whether it was art or a place to sit, and the Crystal Palace.

Fountain of the Fallen Angel

Velázquez Palace

Crystal Palace

The dots were art and you were supposed to imagine columns
connecting the dots on the floor with the dots on the ceiling.

Pond in the park where you could rent boats.

And thus concludes our Spring Break. It was a nice, relaxing week of travel and I enjoyed the opportunity to see more of Spain.

Semana Santa: Toledo

One day while we were staying in Madrid, we took a day trip to Toledo. Toledo is a very pretty city with lots of cute narrow streets….that were also very windy and there were a lot of hills.

Luckily, we actually guessed a pretty good route towards the tourism office and once we had a map, we generally didn’t have any problems. The only hard part was when the map didn’t show changes in altitude…

While in Toledo we visited La Casa del Greco, el Museo Sefardi, la Mezquita and la Alcázar.

La Casa del Greco

El Greco is an artist originally from Greece, hence the name, who eventually moved to Toledo. I did a project on him for Spanish class in high school, so I was really excited to see some of his works. Pictures weren’t technically allowed, but I did sneak this one.

View and Plan of Toledo

View of Toledo is my favorite work by El Greco, but it is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, so we weren’t able to see it.

View of Toledo

Sefardi Museum is a former synagogue that is now a museum to the Jewish people and in all of Spain. We learned a lot of things, but also left with a lot of questions. There were menorahs both with 7 branches and 9 branches. Anyone know anything about menorahs and why they might have a different number of branches?

Used to hold the Torah scroll

Chair used when circumcising babies

The mosque in Toledo was actually quite small. When the Christians took over, they turned it into a church and added an addition, which basically doubled the size.

Original mosque

Christian addition

You can see where the addition is.

Finally, the Alcazar, which means fortress. I expected it to be more of what a fortress was like, but it’s actually a museum for the Spanish army. Which isn’t really my thing. But, it was free for students, so it was okay. We didn’t spend too much time there. We went through the section of history that we had just learned about in our Spanish history class and that was about it.

Overall, I really enjoyed Toledo. It's a very beautiful city with a lot of cool history.

Semana Santa: Madrid: Part 2

At the Royal Palace in Madrid there is changing of the guard on the first Wednesday of every month, which compared to Buckingham Palace in London that has it everyday, is not very much. But we were lucky and just happened to be in Madrid on the first Wednesday of the month.

First we killed a bit of time in the park by the palace and visiting a temple that had been moved there from Egypt.

Then it was time. But, as usual, it started late. Because this is Spain.

First, the guard rode/walked around from the back of the palace.

Then, then went into the plaza in the palace grounds.

We’re not really sure all that was going on. They were announcing it over loudspeaker, but it was in Spanish and we couldn’t see very well anyway.

After the changing of the guard, there was a little concert.

It was very interesting to be able to see the changing of the guard in Madrid, I just wish we knew more of what exactly was going on. 

Semana Santa: Madrid: Part 1

Monday I took the night train so that I arrived in Madrid at 8:00 in the morning. I actually got more sleep than I expected. I headed to the hostel and was able to put my stuff in my room even though it wasn’t time to check in. Then I had about 5 hours before my friend Christi was supposed to show up so I went on a tour of the city through SANDEMANs NEW Europe. It was a ‘free’ tour, meaning you could tip the guide however much you thought was appropriate/what fit in your budget at the end. I really liked my tour. My tour guide was from Ireland and she told us a lot of cool stories about the history of Madrid.

We began in the Plaza Mayor. This was the main square where all the important activities used to be held like bull-fighting and Inquisition executions. There used to be 4-tier seating and people would rent out their balconies.

Then we walked just about a block away and saw the world’s oldest restaurant. They have a certificate to prove it. :)

The bear and tree is the symbol of Madrid. Apparently it used to just be a bear with all four paws on the ground, but at some point in history the city and the church were arguing over who got to cut down the trees and who got to use the land for pasture. So, they asked the king who decided that the city got to cut down the trees and the church could use the land. So, the 2 paws on the tree represent the city and the 2 paws on the ground represent the church. Later in history, a king (I can’t remember which) was deathly ill, but then someone made him a potion out of a particular type of berry and he was cured. So after that, they added berries to the tree in the symbol to represent that.

The Bear and Tree statue found in Plaza del Sol.

This is the cathedral. It is actually pretty new, finished in 1993. But, it took 100 years to build. Thus 3 different architects with 3 different styles. It is very obvious where the changes in style happened.

This is the back.

And this is the front. 

We ended our tour at the Royal Palace where Christi and I saw the changing of the guard the next day.

SANDEMANs NEW Europe operates tours in many different cities in Europe. If you get the chance, I would definitely go on one of their tours!

Semana Santa: Santiago de Compostela

Semana Santa technically means Holy Week, but refers to the week and a half vacation I had starting the Thursday before Easter and lasting through the next week.

For the first Friday through Monday I was in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The cathedral in Santiago is where the remains of St. James are kept. So, there is a pilgrimage leading to Santiago called El Camino. There are several different routes, the most popular one beginning in France. You can read more about El Camino here. It was really cool to be in the plaza in front of the cathedral and see people arriving after having walked for weeks to get there.

This is the symbol of El Camino.
It's also found in Oviedo because Oviedo is on the route.

Something unique that occurs in Spain during Holy Week are the processions. These oftentimes include what look like KKK uniforms, but these processions have been going on for hundreds of years long before the KKK. I tried to attend a few processions in Santiago, but many were canceled due to rain. I did catch one luckily, but their outfits didn't include the hoods.

I think this one was kind of cheating because it was on wheels, they didn't carry it.

Both men and women participated and you can kind of
see in the picture that some of them were barefoot.

Some of them carried the metal staffs that were used to
prop the float up when they stopped.

Daylight savings time began on Easter in Spain, I believe 3 weeks after in the United States. Which resulted in me missing the main Easter Mass in the cathedral because my little track phone doesn't change time automatically and I forgot the time switched.

Some of the cool things I saw in Santiago included the cathedral, an exhibit of more than 200 varieties of Camelia, the flower of Galicia, and the cathedral museum.

The cathedral

Double organ!

The altar

Camelias

Stay tuned for Part II when I head to Madrid!