I guess if you would have asked me a few years ago what I would expect to be doing for my 22nd birthday, I don’t think I would have guessed I’d be in Madrid sipping the most delicious sangria and surrounded by friends I’ve made from all over the world.
But that was just the case. This year, I didn’t get any fancy birthday party with my family, I didn’t go on any dates, I didn’t see a lot of my friends nor did I receive any real gifts. In fact, I spent about the first half the day on my own, I visited the Spanish National Library that morning and it’s adjoined museums, I had some good home-made (by me) food and I watched some TV on my laptop.
The second half of the day, or shall I say, the evening, was a lot different, and honestly I don’t think I could have had a better time. I planned to go to one of my favorite bars, Cofi, and I invited the friends I had that were remaining in Madrid. It’s important to note at this point that the majority of my friends here in Madrid have left. Obviously, most of the friends I made in the first semester left in January, and a lot of the friends I made now in the second semester left already, and frankly there are more and more returning home every day, I guess it’s evident that the semester and my study abroad experience is slowly coming to an end (#emotional, but let’s not talk about that…)
Anyways, so I made plans to go to this bar, Cofi, and I forget if I’ve mentioned it in previous blog posts or not, but Cofi is essentially this really small bar close to the main square, Sol. It’s so small that I don’t believe more than 15 people can fit in it as well. The owner, Antonio, is also the sole employee at the bar, and he is without a doubt one of the nicest people I’ve met here in Madrid. It was introduced to me a few months back by my friend Mike, who was introduced to it by our friend Lisa who was introduced to it by our friend Myrthe, and it has become the place to be. Not only does Antonio charge €2.50 for his incredibly delicious sangria, he serves tapas with the food and the ambiance in the place is chill and relaxing, lending itself well to pleasant conversation among friends.
So I had around maybe ten people attend, and it wasn’t one of these big clubbing evenings (I’ve had so many of those in Madrid let me say), it was just a relaxed night socializing with friends, and honestly I couldn’t have had a better time. I would like to once again thank everyone for showing up and making this 22nd birthday, my first (and hopefully not last) in Madrid truly special.
Now, It was a long-awaited reunion, and it finally happened two Thursdays ago, on Thursday May 26th, the day following my 22nd birthday, really late at night, my mother and sister arrived at the Madrid airport from their flight at Berlin and I got a chance to see them for the first time since late August of last year and we would spend the following nine days together until their departure for Montreal from London this morning and my return to Madrid right now, since I am writing to you all from the plane.
It was an interesting time we spent together. For one thing, hosting them at my house was a bit difficult since my sister and I were forced to sleep on my couch in the kitchen while I graciously donated my bed to my mother. Let’s just say that I learned the hard way that the couch is not very comfortable… and I didn’t get any sleep in four nights. This being said, we went out and I showed them all of the best eating and drinking spots in Madrid, including El Tigre, 100 Montaditos and Cofi, but I also gave them a tour of all the best sites to see; both the touristy and non-touristy places, and they especially liked the Matadero, which is a fringy type of place. My mom especially appreciated Madrid for its abundant nature, everywhere you turn in this city there are parks and green spaces, and frankly I believe that if it weren’t for Spain’s economy woes at the moment that Madrid would be the ideal place to settle down.
Madrid was a good time for all of them and I did take great pleasure in showing my family around my favorite city, though our next stop was Barcelona, a city I had already been to but was happy to go to again. My mom had in fact also been to Barcelona couple of years earlier, but wasn’t able to see much of the city unfortunately. After a nice tour of Barcelona over the first two days, we got treated to quite a high quantity of delicious food, including this paella, recommended to me by my roommate Andrew’s girlfriend, Noelle, who did her year abroad there in Barcelona. It was quite delicious!
Now, on my first visit to Barcelona there was one thing that I had really wanted to do that I did not get the opportunity to, and that is going to visit Montserrat. Montserrat is a religious monastery on top of a mountain about one hour outside of Barcelona, famous for its monastery (obviously), its hiking trails and its amazing views over the landscape. Unfortunately, Catherine did not want to go hiking (I would have gone in an instant), so we didn’t do that, but I must say the town, and the views, were quite impressive, and we even took the cable car up the mountain, which was really cool!
Furthermore, on this trip to Barcelona I met some distant relatives that I didn’t even know I had. Back in the 60s when my grandparents were immigrating to Canada, these people instead immigrated to Barcelona. Now, I’m no history expert, however at the time Franco was ruling Spain, and he actually ruled until 1975, so immigrating to Spain was not the soundest choice financially, I’d say, however if I understand the story correctly I think that she was in a relationship with a Spanish person, who she would later marry. Cute story.
Barcelona was nice, but the highlight of this trip has to have been London, for both positive and negative reasons. First off, London was COLD, and EXPENSIVE.
UPDATE, I AM NO LONGER ON THE PLANE BACK TO LONDON, I AM WRITING THE REST OF THIS POST ON A BUS TO SEGOVIA, A TOWN RIGHT OUTSIDE MADRID THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE VERY NICE!
As it turned out, I had packed my suitcase with the majority of the things I will not necessitate for the remainder of my stay in Europe. This included all my winter clothes and school material that I was done with, and my plan was to send all of this back home with my mom and sister when they were flying home from London. Seeing as they had packed only one large suitcase for the two of them, they had extra space for a second suitcase and thus to accommodate bringing my stuff back home.
Now, I don’t even want to get into how emotional it was just to be sending stuff back home, because this basically means that I will soon be back home myself. However, this being said, it was a happy coincidence that all my winter gear just happened to be with us in London, seeing that as soon as we arrived we were welcomed by the sudden realization that we were clearly no longer in sunny Spain. London was cold, it was dark, and cloudy. In fact, when we arrived, dressed in shorts and all, we were freezing and dressed in my winter clothing for the remainder of the trip. Thus, I can say this year was unique in many ways, but it was also a year in which I wore summer clothes in January and February (in Tenerife and even in the Basque Country) and now I can say I wore winter clothes in June, in London.
The other con of London. Yes, the prices. As you may or may not know, the British pound greatly outweighs the Canadian dollar. In fact, around 100$ Canadian will get you around 50 pounds, essentially the pound outweighs the dollar 2:1. The prices, however, do not reflect this. Just to give all of you Canadians who have never been to London a sense of the prices, say you go to a restaurant in Montreal. A typical meal will cost around 10-15$, well in London, expect a typical meal to cost around 10-15£, if not more, and then double that amount to get the amount you are paying in CAD. A meal of three dishes of fish and chips and one pint of beer to share among the three of us cost us circa 40 pounds, so basically 80$… woah!
Fish and chips were good though!
To make matters even worse, when my mom went to exchange her money for pounds back in Montreal before heading over, they gave her a 50-pound note that has apparently been out of circulation since 2011, meaning that nobody, but nobody was accepting it. It kinda freaks me out how an official bank can still give people notes that are no longer in circulation, and my mom then had to go back to the bank and argue for a full refund upon return to Montreal.
Even the metro (or the TUBE, as they call it) costs no less than around 14$/day, even though it is extremely efficient, a metro coming every 1-3 minutes at all times.
OK, so London is expensive and cold (occasionally), but to be honest London is an amazing city and if it weren’t for the crazy prices I think I would actually enjoy living there very much if given the opportunity.
First off, to note, the British economy is clearly doing well, despite the upcoming Brexit referendum (which I really hope doesn’t pass because I travel Europe with my British passport and don’t want to need a VISA to live/study in European countries…). You can tell the economy is doing well just by taking a look at the city and noticing the large amount of construction projects throughout the city. Even the already expansive metro was being further extended, impressive!
The city, though, is beautiful, and quite different from every other European city I’ve seen other than Dublin. And from what I hear, there are so many areas of the city I haven’t even seen yet, so hey one day when I’m rich I gotta head back. A tranquil stroll around London will have you seeing those typical British houses and that typical British architecture that’s so famous in the movies, and I rather enjoyed that.
And the city features, as we all know, its fair share of tourist attractions, from King’s Cross and St. Pancras station, to Harrod’s, to the famous Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Leicester and Trafalgar Squares, Big Ben, the churches, everything in London is big, impressive, and patriotic, and it is indeed one of the nicest cities I have seen thus far. In fact, unlike in North America, London is riddled with history everywhere, big historic events happened everywhere you look, probably moreso in London than in other European cities, and it is quite a sight to behold.
If all the aforementioned was not enough to make London a prime touristic destination, add to the mix a heavy Harry Potter focus and it’s game over. Interesting fact, London is the second touristiest city in the world, behind….. Bangkok, Thailand.
Harry Potter is everywhere throughout the city, and it is first identified upon exiting King’s Cross station and seeing platform 9 ¾ and the big overpriced Harry Potter gift shop. There was a long lineup even to take a picture with platform 9 ¾, a lineup my sister obviously insisted we wait in, so we did, and I’m a Gryffindor, look at me!
To delve deeper into our Harry Potter journey, on our final day in London, my mom, sister and I visited the Harry Potter filming set, and this was by far one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had, and frankly any Harry Potter fan would find him/herself in heaven in this place. But I’ll take an in depth look at that in my following blog post because it merits lots of space just for itself.
I’ll conclude this post with this… Today is June 14, and I will be leaving Spain in around 16 days. I have 16 days left in the place I now call home, though I’m determined to come back and maybe spend at least another year here, we’ll see I guess…
I’ll post an emotional blog post on how this place has changed my life as D-day approaches, but I’ll just say that this last month and a half here in Madrid constitutes a new chapter in my exchange, a rather different one in which I’m not even really surrounded by too many friends, since the majority have already left. In fact, every day I need to get creative and find something to do, find people to hang with, and I rise to the challenge and continue enjoying every single minute.
Just last week, for example, I went to the mountains with my Italian friend Amar, and this was our view!
And the following day, I attended a pool party with my friends Fiona and Myrthe and I met some of their friends, and I had a really good time. Yesterday I visited the Prado museum and went out to watch the Italy game for the Euro Cup (Abbiamo vinto 2-0, Forza Italia!!) and today I am taking a solo day-trip to Segovia, famous for its Roman aqueduct, and I still can’t believe I haven’t been here yet. Thursday and Friday I will be visiting Salamanca and then next Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be off to Santiago de Compostela in the region of Galicia in Northern Spain. I am keeping myself busy y estoy disfrutando de todo lo que España me puede ofrecer (I am taking advantage of everything Spain has to offer).
Dan.
Studying Abroad in Madrid!! 