May 29, 2008
OK, so I should be working on my journal and site evals right now. But I’m procrastinating. I’m in the motor coach right now, headed out of Madrid to Bilbao. I decided to go ahead and journal this as we’re going since internet is gonna be kind of scarce and I still want to make some semi-regular posts as much to chronicle things for myself as for all of you! So by the time you read this, this post will be old. Who knows how old, but still, past .
Saturday we got on the plane in Honolulu. 27 Architecture students, 2 Civil Engineering Students, 2 professors. We flew from Honolulu to San Francisco and we had a 9 hour layover there. We got in at 5:30 in the morning. The flight wasn’t too bad. We weren’t all in a big clump, and I got stuck sitting next to a guy that kept wanting me to get up so he could go somewhere. I also don’t sleep well on planes, so, no sleep then. But that’s just a 5 hour-ish flight. When we got in, we couldn’t get to the International Terminal without going through security again, and folks figured there was enough time to head into the city, so we went to the BART station. Unfortunately, this was a Sunday, so the BART didn’t start running until 8am. We needed to be back around 11:30am for our 2pm flight to make sure we had plenty of time in case of problems, so that kinda nixed that idea. By the time the BART started running and we got anywhere, it’d be time to come back! I was planning on meeting up with
[Bad username: alinsa ] anyhow, so I hung out while they headed in to find food to wait to get picked up.
She and her family picked me up and we went out and had a lovely breakfast. I got to meet the family and they were very nice. We joked around, caught up, and marveled at a restaurant that served you OJ instead of water when you sat down. Then we headed back and I got back to the group with no problem. We sat around and played cards while we waited for our plane. Then we got to board for our 11 hour flight to Frankfurt. I might have gotten around 2 hrs of sleep on this flight. I watched some of the movies (they played 4), read some of my book, and dozed some even if I didn’t actually sleep. Oh, and wrote some in my journal! I was proud of myself. Actually, you could see a whole lot of us with our journals out on the plane, getting that first entry in.
Despite it being such a long flight, I wasn’t dying. I was surprised. We got into Frankfurt and deplaned through the back, then got onto a shuttle, and headed over to another terminal. We went through customs and then hung out for another 2 hours until our flight to Madrid. That flight I actually got some sleep on. They served us a meal and these cute little bottles of water! That flight also wasn’t packed, so we had a lot more room.
When we got to Madrid, we came into one of the older terminals and we had to hop a shuttle over to the new terminal. The airport there? Was amazing. I’ll have pictures posted at some point I’m sure. Just trust me. If you ever fly into Madrid and end up going to an older terminal, catch the shuttle over to Terminal 4 and check it out. You probably can’t see the whole thing, but even the part before the security checkpoint is worth checking out.
Then we went to our hotel and checked in. We were able to grab a shower (finally!) and a nap before dinner. Then, it was back to sleep since we were so tired. The next morning, 7:30am wakup call. Breakfast, then off into town. We saw some sites on the bus, got to see the royal palace and the new cathedral there. We even got to go inside of it and I saw a pipe organ! This is significant because of my Project #2 that had a pipe organ as one of my musical instruments. Then we walked through part of the city, saw a few plazas including Plaza Mayor. Then we went to the Prada. One thing about our museum tours so far. Our city guide tells us a lot about the artwork. I don’t think she really understood we wanted to see the buildings. She was showing us only select pieces due to the time constraints, but sometimes she didn’t show us anything in the new additions that we came to see, because there weren’t any pieces in them she wanted to show us. Now, don’t get me wrong. We were seeing some masters. I saw Manet and Monet and Picasso and Dali and Rembrant. Goya and El Greco and Mucha. But, I was there for the buildings. Seeing the cloisters in the addition of the Prada was neat. I had to go up and touch it. Actually, I did that a lot. After the Prada we went to the Thyssen. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 6:30pm. Dinner was at 8pm, so a little time to unwind. By the time we finished dinner, which tended to be a leisurely group affair, there was time for a shower, a bit of journaling, and then sleep!
The next day we did a bit more touring from the bus. We went to see the ‘Gateway of Europe’, the two leaning towers in Madrid. We went to see a hotel where every floor was designed by a different famous architect, but they were booked and they ddin’t want a whole group of us around, so they kicked us out. We had a brief stop with the extra time to check out the bull ring. Then we went to the Reina Sophia, originally designed as a hospital and now a museum. The acoustics in there were terrible! We usually get an hour for lunch, which is on our own. The day before my roommate and I managed to find a little sandwich place, but this day all of us from the same Studio went to lunch together. We booked out and found a sit-down restaurant and had an awesome lunch. More pricy than a sandwich of course, but we got to all hang out and have a really nice meal instead of rushing through. That didn’t leave us with any extra time to sketch though. Ah well. There are other sites!
Speaking of, we went to the Caxia Forum, which used to be an electrical station and is now a museum. The architects gutted the place and lifted it up off of ground. It was neat, but the only part of the original building is the façade. It also had this 5 story vertical garden that was neat. We headed back to the hotel (an early day, 5:30pm!) and I got ahold of
[Bad username: argaurd ] and we met up for dinner while the rest of my group went for tapas. I’ve known him for 8 years now! First time we got to meet of course. It was cool. We hung out in a little bar place until the restaurant for dinner opened (they don’t normally open for dinner until around 9pm) and then we had octopus and lamb ribs. It was cool. That’s one thing about Spain. They eat dinner late. Eating at the hotel, we could usually have dinner at 8pm, but most people in Spain eat later. So by the time you finish eating dinner, take a shower, it’s time to go to sleep!
Today was a 6:30am wakeup call. 7am, luggage outside the door. 7:45am, the coach leaves. It’s about a 5 hour drive to Bilbao, and we’re around 1.5 hours in. I think we’re due for a ‘coffee break’ soon. Today we’re headed to the Gugenheim. I’ll probably write again tomorrow on the drive to Zaragoza.
Since I’m in Spain, Adios!
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cyriael been. You can't get through a day without an update from me! Yeah right :)
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