We arrived back in Madrid in the
early evening on the Wednesday of Holy Week.
We had to go and check in to our new accommodation, the room we hastily
booked after our upset earlier in the week.
The room was basic, but clean, and the woman who ran the hostel was very
nice. We then headed out into the city
to find some food and to stretch our legs after the train.
We headed towards the other side
of the Puerta del Sol in search of food and eventually stumbled upon a bar
which had a decent looking menu del dia, just as the rain began. We sat in the bar for a while, eating and
watching a really bad Spanish comedy show.
We headed back out into the city just as the rain had stopped and as we
were walking back across the Puerta del Sol we saw a large crowd assembled and
heard drumming coming down one of the side streets. We had inadvertently stumbled onto a Semana
Santa procession. The first one my
mother and I had ever seen in real life.
She did her usual of getting over-emotional…oh mammy…and we watched the
different cofradias marching with the different tronos and bands. I couldn’t wait for Easter Sunday so that I
could join in one.
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| Solid wooden trono. Decorated with fresh flowers. |
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| The Cofradia carrying the crosses. some were even barefoot. All done as penance. |
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| A representative of each of the groups who marched. |
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| This outfit was the most impressive of them. |
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| That trono is very heavy. It takes up to 80 people to carry one. |
The following day we got up at a
reasonable time and we decided we would go and see the NASA exhibition which
was going on at Casa del Campo at the other side of Madrid, just outside the
city. The trip to get there was
interesting to say the least. We got the
metro and when we came back out into the city we were not in Kansas anymore…we
were out in the rough part of the town.
We had our google map directions and headed through the dodgy looking
flats. We got a little confused and we
had to ask someone for directions…she was definitely a few screws lose….she
flagged down two policemen who were there to get the crazy homeless guy with a
bat away from the residential area…but anyway we made it in one piece to the
exhibit.
The exhibition was NASA: A Human
Adventure and it was all about the beginnings of the space race up to the
present day and into the future programmes of NASA and their partners like
ESA. We were given an audio-guide which
was divided up into sections and had a lot of information broken up into
sections: The Dreamers (the visionaries and sci-fi writers who inspired so many
to try to get humans into space), Go Fever! (about the Space Race and the first
astronauts Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard), Pioneers (people like Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth whose work helped invent the first rockets),
Innovation (the machines and technology used), Endurance (space suits and the
food taken on board), The Next Generation (NASA’s future projects) and a
special memorial for those astronauts who died trying to reach their goals.
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| An early space suit design |
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The entrance to the Dreamers section which focused on sci-fi writers such as Jules Verne who inspired so many to reach for the stars.
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My mum and I both loved the
exhibit. I have always been fascinated
by space and if I had even an inkling of physics ability I’d be working for a
space agency when I graduated…alas I don’t so I’ll need to make do with hoping
to be an interpreter of the aliens ever land, xeno-linguistics anyone. There were loads of model rockets showing the
scale and evolution of design. It was
interesting to see the different types of fuel which could have been used
etc. The website about the exhibition
has more info if anyone wants it
http://ahumanadventure.com/exhibition
After the exhibition it was time
to head back into the city centre and grab a coffee. We headed to Starbucks just as the rain came
on again. So we sat there a while whilst
our Rick Steve’s guidebook came up with suggestions on where to go next. It told us that the Royal Palace was free to
EU citizens on Thursday afternoons, and since neither of us had ever visited it
we gritted our teeth and headed out into the pouring rain to visit the
palace.
We stood in a line outside the
palace for about fifteen minutes and managed to get royally soaked (pun
intended). Using our newly acquired guidebook
we wandered through the palace and found out a lot of things that weren’t on
the official plaques (which were also very interesting). Most of the rooms were so intricately
designed and beautifully decorated. And our guidebook told us how some of the more elaborate reliefs had to be dismantled during the civil war and how if you look closely you can see the joints. And
it was interesting to see a foreign palace, even though I haven’t seen
Buckingham or Holyrood anyway.
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| My mum at the placio real |
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| I'm one of the guards now |
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| Across the courtyard is the cathedral |
After the palace we went back to
the hostal to dry off, get changed and the headed out for dinner. Another day another menu del dia. Good hearty Spanish food. I’m pretty sure I had roast chicken which I love
when it is made in Spain because it is always so juicy.
On the Friday we were getting
ready to head back to the bus station and back to Baeza. A very leisurely day.
When we arrived back in Baeza as
we were walking back to the flat with all our travelling stuff we ran into a
problem…or rather into a procession. We
had of course timed it so that our arrival coincided with the end of a Good Friday
mass and one of the largest processions of the week. We stood on the main street and watched it,
with all our luggage before we went the very long circuitous route to the
apartment. My band was due to play at
nine o’clock so we got ready to go and see them. We stopped off to watch the end of the
previous procession as they were doing the final round and got to witness one
of the defining features of an Andalusian Semana Santa – a seata. The old man who had sung at my concert the
previous week started singing in the street as the rain drizzled down. The seata is when Andaluz people sing/talk to
God. It is very powerful and it is taken
with a lot of respect. For example, the
people carrying the trono needed to get it inside because of the rain but
because this old man was singing they couldn’t/wouldn’t move forward. After he stopped they double marched into the
church.
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| The trono showing Jesus being taken down from the cross after his death. |
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| Whilst we normally associate this look with the KKK it started out as a way to give penance to God anonymously. Here in Andalusia there is normally at least one member of every family doing this every year. |
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| One of the brotherhoods walking in the main street of Baeza. |
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| Once you have done this once you will be buried with the robes as an indicator when you get to heaven that you have done it. |
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| Solid wooden trono, intricately designed. |
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| The old man singing his saeta. |
We arrived at the starting place
where the banda de Baeza were supposed to be starting from. Unfortunately due to the rain their
procession was cancelled but at least my mum got to meet Martin and Pepe and
some of the other band members. Then I took
her to go and get some drinks at one of the pubs. We returned to the flat exhausted and ready
for bed.
