Made out of people

Madrdid & Sevilla

One of my friends is shortly travelling to Spain for his honeymoon (um, with his wife. Obviously.) and his itinerary starts with "Arrive Madrid. Leave Madrid immediately."

I spent a little more time than that--two nights and a day--but there is something to be said for his wise advice. Madrid is a big city, a crowded city, and it takes a fairly substantial degree of extroversion to just hop into it and make yourself feel a part of it. I was already fatigued from playing menu roulette (difficult in a country where the two basic staples are ham and shrimp and both locals and travellers take pride in eating as many things at as many places as possible), from using a combination of sign language and high-school Latin and bus-stop Spanish (hey, So Cal helped!) to try to get by.

And so I gave up, and ran to El Escorial, a small town in the mountains outside Madrid that had been chosen by Philip II as the home of his monastary / castle. The monastary was nice; turning away and just walking uphill was nicer. I found bicyclists, professions of love and politics scrawled on the sidewalk, cows grazing on the hills, out that I didn´t have any water, a model being photographed for a stunning photo shoot, and a great view.

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I got back to Madrid, and realized that my vague headache wasn´t just an effect of Madrid, but also an effect of a growing head-cold. Allegra, nasal spray, tylenol, and ten hours´sleep made the place a lot nicer.

(I also paid $40 for two pair underwear, and decided that my camera didn´t need repairs until I get to Seattle.)

The next morning, I meant to catch an early train to Sevilla, but somehow didn´t leave town until 7:30 pm.

That´s ok: I visited museums, enjoyed more of Madrid, and am now wandering happily through Sevilla.

Sevilla (´Seville´) was not nearly as affected by either Rosini (´The barber of...´) or Bizet (´Carmen´) as Elsione was by Shakespeare. This is probably not surprising.

Were this John´s LiveJournal, I´d now put in a poll: "Where do I go next?" with choices like "Jerez" and "Some random tourist city on the coast" and "The national park in the important wetlands [=really big swamp]". But this isn´t, , so I will make my decisions and you will read about them later.