Monday - Classes in the morning and afternoon. I guess not much happened Monday.
Tuesday - Classes in the morning, and then the Royal Palace in the afternoon. I'd been there before, but I didn't really remember much of the inside. It was neat to go back again.
Wednesday - Classes in the morning. Archaeological Museum immediately afterwards. Then as a class we went to Plaza de Colon to watch the football game. For you americans out there :-P, that is soccer. Spain won! 4-0, yay! It was quite a mess in the plaza, but it wasn't as busy as I thought it would be there. And I got a free lemon flavored Font Vella (Water).
Thursday - Classes in the morning (as always). Then a big surprise... I had class with a group from Tennessee that was going to Toledo in the afternoon, and I was able to tag along!! I was so excited. I love Toledo. And the group that I am with is actually talking about going for class. I can stand to go back. The cathedral was closed for Corpus Christi, and I really want to go back inside. But everything else there was so beautiful... And about the last hour there it looked like a storm was brewing, it was so cool. It started pouring right after we got on the bus to go back to Madrid. And one of the things that I thought was cool was that while we were walking around, we went around a corner, and low and behold there was the store that I had stopped at 3 years ago when I was in Toledo. I was so shocked, I had to take a picture of it!
Friday - Classes in the morning, nap, and then I went to the Natural Science Museum. It was pretty neat looking in there. Oh, and they had an alien.
Saturday - El Escorial and the Valley of the fallen. I wasn't very impressed with the Escorial. I guess the thing I liked the best about it was that we went through tiny rooms that weren't very impressive, and then walked downstairs into a Cathedral. And it was neat seeing all of the tombs... that place must be haunted. And for the Valley of the Fallen, that was what made the trip worthwhile. The history of Spain in the last 100 years is interesting in my opinion. I won't go into all of the details, but from 1939 to 1975 Spain was under the rule of Francisco Franco, a fallangista dictator. He basically kept Spain in a time capsule... not even kissing was allowed in public. Well, the government wouldn't let him be buried in the Escorial with the rest of Spain's royalty, so he built this grand cross within 20 minutes of where the Escorial is so that he could be buried there. He claimed that it was a memorial for all of the people who had died in the Spanish Civil War when he was trying to take power... but I think I agree with my teacher's opinion that it was just built for him to be buried there. One of the creepy things is that he took 40,000 soldiers that died in that war and put them in the walls in his tomb. Their names aren't even etched anywhere in this massive building... It's just wrong. But it is interesting. And it seems like everyone else that was with us on the trip only thought it was a big memorial, not a massive tomb that screamed "Look at me!" Oh, and one of the even crazier things was that people had left flowers on Franco's tomb with letters saying things like "You set such a great example and I try to live by it.." It sort of seems to me that there is going to be some sort of uprising in Spain sometime soon to try to get rid of the monarchy again, but hopefully they won't try to get a dictator in. But really, from what I know, the monarchy still exists, but most things within the government are democratic. Oh, I don't know what I'm talking about. And I've gone too far into the topic again.... Oh, and last night we also went out to Hard Rock Cafe. Yay for French fries!
