Madrid

I had originally intended to go to Morocco this weekend, but due to the only flight from Amsterdam to Marrakesh leaving at 3:30pm and a meeting for my new project (which is in Hamburg) being scheduled on Friday until 3:00pm I had to make some adjustments. It turned out alright though as I was able to switch the weekends of my Madrid and Marrakesh trips to get the flights to work for a pretty small change fee and will still (hopefully) be able to visit both of them. 

I was a little nervous before going because there had been stories in the news all week about protests brewing and a showdown coming on Friday at midnight (right when I was getting into the city) when a government ban on protests was set to take effect. Something about students protesting the government over the unemployment rate – doesn't quite make sense to me why you protest something that is a statistic and is largely uncontrollable, especially in the short term, it makes about as much sense as protesting a low level of GDP per capita or a low average life span, but I won't pretend to know too much about what was going on – but regardless it ended up being a very peaceful and kind of fun set of protests. No violence, just lots of hippie students sitting around a square with signs, playing music and the like. 

Besides the protests, I really enjoyed the city. I felt it was very similar to Lisbon (which I also thought was very cool) with similar architecture, great warm weather, lots of narrow cobblestone streets and squares and lots of cool bars and cafes overflowing with people and serving capirinhas and mojitos late into the night. You hear a lot about the nightlife in Spain – how it is very lively and goes very late, and it definitely turned out to be true in Madrid. The bars are packed with people, even older folks and families, past midnight, and clubs apparently don't even get going until 1 or 2am. Maybe the nightlife was kicked up a notch by the protests, which were occurring at night, but I still get the feeling it's like this all the time as it seemed to be the case all over the city.

On Friday night and a bit Saturday during the day I checked out the protests, and after that I went to do some sightseeing. There aren't really any iconic Eiffel Tower-like sights in Madrid, but there were still lots of cool things to see.

Plaza Mayor

Royal Palace 

Palacio de Oriente with Almudena Cathedral behind

It is the middle of the large bullfighting festival in Madrid, so I also went out to the big bullfighting arena, Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, to try and buy some tickets for that night. Unfortunately, the cheapest tickets available were EUR 55, which I didn't think was quite worth it. I was pretty bummed about not being able to see the spectacle, but hopefully I'll get a chance some other time. After striking out there, I went back towards the city, checked out the La Latina and Lavapies districts, and then went to the large park, Parque de Retiro, to hang out for a bit. The park was pretty great – really large with lots of different things (a pond big enough for rowing races, some monuments, an open air orchestra stage, lots of trails, botanical garden, etc) and lots of people making it lively. It also helped that the weather was pretty perfect while I was there.

Bull fighting arena

Another thing I thought was cool about Madrid was the number of markets around the city. There was a very cool, upscale indoor market called El Mercado de San Miguel near the Plaza Mayor with lots of tasty food, a cool open-air used book market that I found near the Banco de Espana, and I also checked out the El Rastro market. The latter is a huge market that goes throughout all the streets in the La Latina/Lavapies area only on Sunday mornings with lots of touristy stuff, used/antique goods and other random stuff. I also took to the Spanish schedule of eating, getting some delicious food during the weekend, all a few hours after the time I would usually eat it.

Fruit stand in the San Miguel Market

Fountain by the outdoor book market

Overall I found Madrid a really cool city, definitely near the top of my list as far as European cities to hang out or live in even if it's a little light on super-famous sights to see. Now, it's back to Hamburg for this week and also looking forward to a visit from my parents the next two weekends!

New camera!

When I was in Moscow a few weeks ago I decided it would be worth it to get a nicer, DSLR camera to capture all the cool stuff on my upcoming trips. I'd thought about getting one before, so now seemed like a good time. I actually got it (a Canon EOS 550D) a couple weeks ago, but didn't use it during Queen's Day because I didn't want to bring it around and have someone spill beer on it or something. Some of the Budapest pictures were taken with it, but I took it out this weekend to play around a bit and figure out how to better use all of the features. So far I'm really liking the better quality (higher resolution, much much better in low light, a lot more variance in depth of field) and especially liking the increased control over the shooting specs. Makes it a lot easier to take the shot you want.

Below are some of the pics. Picasa compresses them so some of the quality is lost, but here they are anyway.

Budapest

This weekend was another trip to a European capital city, Budapest, Hungary. As usual, it was very cool to see a new country and culture, and Budapest proved to be a nice relaxing town for a weekend trip.

I got in late Friday night, and after finishing up a little work and waiting for a little while, Becky got in and we headed into the city. It was too late to do anything then, but they next day we got an early start by heading to one of the city's famous coffeehouses, Gerbeaud, and grabbing some coffee and breakfast. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Basilica and up one of the nice shopping streets of the city, Andrassy ut, to Hero's Square and the city park.

St Stephen's Basilica

inside

Opera House

Hero's Square

After some nice drinks in the park we headed to the Danube River and down, seeing the Parliament building and the "shoes" memorial - a pretty cool and simple WWII memorial. After a little rest we went a a traditional Hungarian restaurant in the city center, which had a "gypsy band" playing and some delicious Hungarian food. The gypsy band idea sounded like it might be kind of annoying, but it was actually really cool - not too loud and not obnoxious, actually provided some nice background for dinner. When we were done we went out to the river to check it out at night, which was cool with all the bridges and buildings lit up. We also stumbled upon the BCG Budapest office!

Parliament building

the shoes memorial

BCG!

Buda Castle at night

Sunday ended up being pretty grey and rainy, but that was ok because we were planning to go to one of the public baths in the city. They're Turkish style baths with lots of indoor and outdoor pools of varying temperatures and saunas and everything, a remnant of when Turkey ruled the country. It was a very unique and pretty cool experience - it's a big stately-looking building with pools everywhere inside and out. We started in one of the warm outdoor pools then went in and sampled a bunch of the different pools and saunas. It was a really large complex, and there were actually a ton of people there. Afterwards I was super relaxed which was good after a day full of walking around the city before. We then went back to Gerbeaud to get some delicious ice cream, and checked out the Buda side of the river (the west side is Buda, the east side is Pest) for a bit before heading to the airport.

the Szechenyi baths

Parliament from the Buda side of the river

Another cool weekend, another awesome city!

Queen's Day

There was no traveling this weekend, and that's because it was one of the biggest holidays in the Netherlands - Queen's Day. Before the day came I kept hearing about how crazy it was, but didn't really know what to expect. Turns out that everyone's descriptions weren't exaggerations and it was a pretty crazy day.

Joining me for the weekend were Job (who's here for a week), Becky, Venkat and Venkat's friend from work David. Together we had a nice American (and Australian) contingent for the Dutch holiday. We started out the weekend by going out Friday night once Venkat and David got it. There were already people everywhere and some stages set up with DJs and music playing, but it proved to be nothing compared to the scene on Saturday. On Saturday it seemed like every street was packed with orange-clad people. Roads were closed, beer and food was being served everywhere, and there seemed to be a stage with a band or a DJ every 100 meters. It was really amazing how many people there were - it seemed every single square was packed shoulder-to-shoulder and most streets were crowded if not packed to the same extent.

The group sets out for the day, appropriately clothed

Heinekenplein - one of many squares with a stage and packed with people

And more people...

We walked around to all the main squares and each was more of the same. Music blasting and tons of people (mostly dressed in bright orange) packed in a big mob. Museumplein had a huge stage, much bigger than the rest, and thousands of people. The other crazy thing was the canals - there were boats filled with people everywhere, and at one point the canal was so packed with boats that it almost just looked like a paved street with people standing on it it was so crowded.

big stage at Museumplein

Orange people all over the Iamsterdam sign

crowded canal...

and an absurdly crowded canal

After a day full of walking around, eating and drinking we came back and crashed for a bit. Then, once we were recharged we went back out for the night. It seemed rather calm after the crazy day (I think everyone was probably passed out), but there was still a good crowd out that night. On Sunday it was weird to walk outside and have it be so peaceful after the chaos of Saturday. The only thing left over was some of the trash from the day before. Quite the experience, and definitely some good Amsterdam memories made this weekend.