BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: VIVA ESPAÑA EDITION: JUNE 10

I feel like a zombie. Sleep and wakefulness make no sense. I’m unsure what day it is or where I am. Apparently I forgot to change one of my clocks and woke up in a panic thinking we were late, only to have a very annoyed Steve tell me it was only a bit after midnight Madrid time. Yikes.

This morning I looked up how to ask "Can I pet your dog?" in Spanish, and this is what it gave me:

"Puedo acariciar a tu perro?"

 

Even with the Google bot recording telling me how to say it, my mind wouldn't wrap around the pronunciation. I blame it on being tired.  So I asked our tour guide, Pedro, how to ask to pet someone's dog. Even with his excellent English, he didn't know what I was asking him.  I had to show him the words.  It seems like the word "pet" isn't one he was familiar with, so when he finally understood, he repeated that phrase above, and with some explaining, we finally understood that "acariciar" is like "caress."  So I'd basically be asking someone if I could caress their dog. I ain't doing that.  I'll just do hand motions and lunge directly at the dog. They'll either let me pet their dog, or I'll get maced.  

Oooh, and before we left the hotel, a marathon, or some kind of race at least, went past our front door.  We stood outside and cheered people on for a long time.  That was fun. For all we know it was just a jogging club, but they were wearing numbers and looked tired, so we cheered!

 

Hooray, running people! 

Today was our first full day in Madrid, and after breakfast (still with the bread, you guys) we were taken to the Prado Museum. There are loads of amazing and famous paintings and other artworks at the Prado, but we were only given a tour of those painted by Spanish artists. (We also weren't allowed to take pictures, so *sad trombone sound.*) As someone who loves art, and especially art painted my famous masters, I was annoyed at the very narrow theme we perused, but also as someone who loves art, I got to see a lot of beautiful works and I'm ok with that. We still saw a lot of stuff that I'd heard about. My favorite was one by Goya, called "The Nude/Clothed Maja" which was a set of two portraits of the same woman (but with her face changed because SCANDALOUS!) One of the portraits was actually nude and one was clothed, and the dude who they belonged to would change them out depending on who was going to see them.  People get so worked up about nudes today and that stuff has been going on since the dawn of man. Although, I guess getting painted nude took a lot longer than a Snapchat would. I bet she got cold!  :)  We had a local tour guide that seemed very passionate about what he was showing us, so I was still entertained, even if I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to.  I did get to see Las meninas, which I'd studied in college, and that was worth the price of admission alone!


We left there and returned to the hotel. I’d love to say that in our free time we explored the city, but Steve and I have napped every chance we have gotten to try and feel more human. I won’t apologize! Besides, the first concert is tonight and we don’t want to be exhausted for that.

The concert was held in a small, mountain village about an hour away called Miraflora de la Sierra and it was...well, it was effing charming. It looked like a place specifically designed to make you love tiny villages in Spain! It looked like something created for Epcot.

 
The place was hilly and surrounded by twisty streets and cafes. We arrived during siesta, and of course promptly shouted the place to the ground like true Americans (oops.) It was cold up there, and started to rain, but the rain sort of stopped just in time for the performance to begin and the people in the town came out to listen. The band sounded amazing and the spectators seemed to truly love the concert. People danced and clapped, and at one point they started chanting what we thought was “roll tide” but apparently was the Spanish word for encore*. Haha, that was confusing!  The concert lasted almost two hours because the conductor likes to keep going despite weather or exhaustion, and we were freezing and wet by the time it was all over.

We were supposed to have dinner in Miraflores, so we packed out this place called the Bohemia Cafe and had an amazing dinner, laughed a lot, and made a lot of noise. In fact, we closed the place down and had to be chased out by our tour guides. It was a great evening. I like traveling with this group of people (at least thus far) because we all have something in common and all want to have a great time.

 Try the lamb. Trust me. 

We’re back at the hotel now and getting ready to sleep. Tomorrow, or later today rather, we are moving south to our next destination! Goodnight!

PS: I am so dehydrated. There is so much wine and so little water. Help me.

*I found out later that they were saying "Otra! Otra! Otra!" but the way they said it really did sound like they were chanting "Roll Tide" with an accent. I wasn't the only one who thought so, so I know it wasn't just my lack of culture, thankyouverymuch.