dAyFiVe: Vamos a Madrid!

The other day I was joking with the Brazilian that American technology was too complicated for him. This cultural insult swiftly made a U-turn and came a slapped me in the face this morning. Apparently my uber simple nokia (basically the same phone I had when I got my first cell phone ever, also a nokia) is far beyond my grasp. The day I bought it I set the alarm to go off Mondays - Thursdays... and guess what today is... NOT Monday-Thursday. So when I set my alarm to wake me up extra early so I could get all cute and ready to show Madrid who was hot stuff... well... my alarm laughed at me and didn't go off. Not one peep.

My madre and hermana told me to be at the bus stop at 9:30 to catch the bus to the train station to meet my group by 10. At what time did a really bad dream wake me up? 9:31.

It was fun to learn that I can in fact be out of a house within five minutes. Who knew? And I made it to the train station just in time. The only problem was, I didn't have my, "Watch out Madrid - Here comes Chelsea the Cupcake Lover!" look... it was more of a "Move over on the metro, Chelsea's coming and clearly should consider showering" look. Oh, bother!

We went on a tour around the city and got ourselves generally oriented with the city, how to get to it, around it and back from it, etc. Highlights from the tour include:

 This appears in the train/metro station Atocha - Renfe in which 191 people died on March 11, 2004 due to terrorist bombings in three separate stations. It's hard to see what exactly this is, but basically it's a huge dome made of plastic with writing all over it in different languages. The writing is a collection of notes left at the station after the bombing praying for peace and for the dead. The dome is the only thing in the room - everything else (walls, ceiling, floor) is all blue, which gives it a sort of eerie feeling. To walk into the room you have to go into a sealed chamber between the room and the station so that the air pressure in the room is maintained to keep the plastic from losing tension. It's a very interesting memorial piece and something so unique I didn't quite know what to make of it. It was nice because it didn't focus on the tragedy so much as the hope for the future and the unity of people from all over.

In that same station was a random patch of tropical forest and shit tons of turtles. I have no idea why. It looked temporary, but perhaps it isn't. Just..... uber random.

The entrance to the Botanical Gardens. I took the picture not because I love botanical gardens, but because if you look closely, you can see a beige high heel on the top of the gate. Again - uber random. The gate was REALLY high, too, so no idea how somebody got that shoe up there!?!

Across the street from the entrance to the Botanical Gardens was this garden - a completely horizontal garden (I kid you not). It's planted on the side of the building. I'm SO serious about this.

Cute lady with cute doggies in the middle of a tiny street... awww!!!

Big protests are going on all around Spain. It has to do with the economy and seriously high unemployment rates for 2011 graduates. This is all I can tell you. What I'm super interested it in is how much more clever Spanish protesters are than Madison protesters. I mean these guys have tents and mattresses and old school buses with megaphones and clever signs in many languages and really beautiful art with ironic messages. They've created mini, thriving communities in all of the major cities' plazas and just live there peacefully, all the while protesting. You can see here one of the tents is even powered by SOLAR panels. I may have no idea what they're protesting (I should really work on educating myself on that this weekend), and chances are I disagree with whatever it is (I'm not big on popular opinion), but these people are just too adorable about it to completely poo poo them.

For anybody who's up to speed with this last season of Two and a Half Men, I'm happy to report that I saw Manny Quinn at one of the plazas... it appears he's cheating on Rose with another Ms. Quinn... *scandal!*
 Incest, mayhaps?!

Royal Palace... the view is amazing and the palace is GINORMOUS.

More in a moment,
Jet-set Cupcake