Dos meses

"Ai se eu te pego" (Michel Telo, 2011)

Seguro que hais oido esta cancion! Cuando salgo, no puedo evitar la voz de Telo. I love this. I need "Ai se eu te pego" to happen at Williams next year. 

For the first weekend of March my friends Jaliz and Olivia came to Madrid to visit me! Yes! Willy B in Spain! We went to the Palacio Real in the city and the Catedral de Almudena next door. The Palacio Real es impresionante--everything is basically gold-coated and very much in the same vein of things as the palace in Aranjuez. In fact, many of the rooms had the same themed decor as the palace I had visited in February. Palaces apparently can be lovely but brassy. I wish I were brassy too, enough so I could get a single picture of the interior, which is forbidden.

Palacio Real en Madrid

The Catedral was much more interesting. Fue construido en los 90s, asi que todo es un poco ironico con toques pasteles. It's evident that something is a bit off when you enter this place. But I actually enjoyed this more than the royal palaces because the interior was so unexpected. After the cathedrals in Toledo, Salamanca, Sevilla, tal, y cual, the Almudena appeared to be the rebellious teenager in a family of old Castilian austerity.

Inside the Catedral de Almudena

Then this Friday the program took us to El Escorial, another royal palace of sorts that also serves as a monastery and  mausoleum. It was not the most interesting place for me because I did not turn into a history buff before coming here. Come here if te gustan difuntos y una falta tremenda de calefaccion.

Inside El Escorial

And yesterday I went to Cercedilla for a little hike. It is really lovely. It is only 30 min by car from Manzanares El Real, but wow what a difference that makes. Gone are the boulders of La Pedriza, which are replaced by a more familiar terrain. It looked more like the forests in the States, except this is Spain so things are in fact a bit dustier.

Cercedilla

Kaitlyn and I at Los Miradores in Cercedilla

One more thing: please tell me I am not crazy when it is 60-something degrees outside and I decide to wear shorts. I won't front like I'm a real Spaniard. I can't wear black skinny pants for much longer. AH.