wheeeee!-kend

Tuesday, April 4th - not like every day isn't like a weekend to me... but i get extra company from my wonderful friends to go out and experience stuff with, so it's extra fun :)

fri night, after nursing my sore throat all day, and pretty much doing nothing, we decided to catch the release of Ice Age 2. About movie theaters in Madrid: there is only one movie theater that shows movies in their original language. All others are dubbed. All movies are released at least 2 weeks after they are released in the USA. (You do the actual math. I have no clue when ice age 2 came out in the US...) The movie theater we went to is the Yelmo Cineplex Ideal, near Plaza Mayor. A seat costs €6.40, and the price is even better on Mondays, as it's the "dia del espectador" (hmm, the day of the movie-goer?). The funkiest thing was that you are assigned a numbered seat. The ticket lady asks you which row and seat number you want, or tells you what is left open... None of this going earlier to get a good seat. If you want that, you have to buy the ticket in advance. And the other cool thing was that bathrooms are right inside the theatre, so if you really have to go, you can still hear the movie while you make a run for it (and hopefully no one in the theater gets to hear you... ;) )

After the movie there was some more milling about the streets. I got hungry at some point so we ducked into a random bar that was still selling tapas (small portions of food served alongside drinks, a very Spanish thing). I saw two odd paintings at front, one of a really fat man, another of a very skinny girl... I started noticing the bartender's shirt... it read "La Soberbia". On the back, there was a list: "ira, gula, pereza, envidia, lujuria, avaricia"... Yeah, the seven deadly sins. Now the paintings made sense ;) Cool place, although closes very early for madrid, at only 1am (although it was already 2am by the time they actually asked ppl to leave).

We made an "early" night of it, as Cris had parents' duties the next day. We are becoming experts at managing sleep deprivation ;) Well, him and Angela, really. I get to sleep in most weekdays :D

Sat was a girls' day out, of shopping. We strolled through the northeast of Madrid, in a shopping area (I have to ask what it was called...) We made it back home by 10pm, I think. Just enough time to get ready to try out a new goth place, 666. It was a pretty cool hangout, lotsa ppl dressed-up, must be where those that go to the Dark Hole go to before that opens. This closed at 1am on the dot, kicked everyone out. We had vague plans to go to Toledo on Sun, so we called it a night. Yeah, it was a slow weekend... lol.

Sun we managed to be on the road by 1:30pm. (lol, in checking the first pic of that day, i just realized the time on my camera is still NY's!) Made it to Toledo with only one wrong turn and one side trip... and found a city full of "obras"... for one reason or another, most tourist attractions were closed! The cathedral was closed 'cause the archbishop was in town. The Alcazar was under renovation (And I don't understand if it's a general name of a type of place, or if there just happens to be one here just like there is one in Segovia...!) The Mezquita didn't actually have weekend hours... *sigh* So I have a lot of pictures of the narrow streets and outsides of buildings... We walked up and down the steep alleys 'til we found a very lousy McDonalds (the fries weren't cooked all the way). We spent about 3.5 hrs in a town which the travel guide I have says it's impossible to see in just a day. Either we walk real fast, or they don't know what they're talking about! The way back was a combination of random side trips and random road picking. It seems I have a built-in GPS, that manages to get me back to a central point. Walking around Madrid, I always end up back to Puerta del Sol. Outside of Madrid, I was doing a decent job of getting us back. So I'm the official navigator :D Here's a whole album of Toledo pics.

Overall, I liked Segovia better. Maybe 'cause it was one of Cris' very special and convenient drive-through sight-seeing tours (he says he has coined the term!), maybe 'cause it was a disappointment to see everything closed in Toledo... Although the latter is supposed to have a bigger historical background, or it's more famous, or something... I wish I had taken the camera with me for the first trip.

Another weekend in Madrid and its outskirts (actually, Toledo is in Castilla y La Mancha... home to the famous Don Quixote!) and still having a blast! Man, it's hard to plan to leave to go to the next spot, however enticing it is to see more ppl I haven't seen in so long...