Un Fin de Semana Con Descanso

Symbol of Madrid

I cannot believe that today is the first day of March. I have practically been in Spain for 2 months now and time is flying by. So this past weekend I did not travel anywhere but just stayed in Alcala and Madrid, which was nice to spend some time exploring and such. Friday night the program coordinator took us to this show in Madrid called Soulria. Basically it is a mix of Flamenco music with American music to create the rhythm. Then there are singers that sing songs in both Spanish and English. For example, one singer sang a Ray Charles song is Spanish with Flamenco rhythms while another sang Strumming My Pain with His Fingers in English. It was a lot of fun to see how two distinct musical rhythms could be mixed together and sound amazing. The singers were unbelievable and the show even got pretty interactive at times. People would get up and start dancing and clapping and even singing along with the words. I felt like I was at more of a concert then a show. After the show a group of us went to a club in Madrid known as Joy. It was an old opera house that was gutted and turned into a club, which was really cool.

I didn’t get home from Madrid till late Friday night so I slept in Saturday morning. In the afternoon I just did some homework but then went to the mall with a couple of my friends. I got a couple things and we ate dinner in the mall. After that I came home did some homework and went to bed pretty early. On Sunday a group of us went to Madrid to go to El Rastro, which is this huge flea market that occurs every Sunday in Madrid. The flea market was very large and had everything ranging from antiques, to clothes, to dogs, and everything in between. I walked around the flea market all morning and then went to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. After lunch I went to Plaza Mayor, a famous plaza in Madrid, and then went to Sol, which is an area in Madrid. In Sol there is a statue of a bear with a tree and I learned that the bear and tree are symbols of Madrid because Spain used to be full of bears. It was finally nice on Sunday so I just took advantage of the sunny weather and walked around the city most of the afternoon. It was so nice to be in Spain this weekend and have a break from traveling for a little bit.

El Rastro