Weekends in Madrid and Paris

Hi Everyone,
It’s been a while since I last posted and a TON has happened. Let’s see…the high holidays went well. I went to the temple in Madrid for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I’ve been going there for Shabbat when I stay in Madrid for the weekend, and I really like it. My total count of Spanish friends is unfortunately still around 0, but the number of Israelis I’ve met here is probably around 6 or 7. School in general is going okay. I’ve had a few tests which have been pretty hard, but compared to other students I’ve done pretty well I think.
In other news, two weekends ago I stayed in Madrid. October 12th is Spain’s national independence day. I went to a huge parade where I planned to see the king and queen and everyone important in Spain. Although the royalty was there, I was standing in a part that didn’t have a view of them, but rather I saw nearly ALL of Spain’s armed forces. And I’m really not joking when I say nearly all. Anyway, it was a cool day with lots of national spirit. Later that day there was an “Americas” celebration, where all these nations of Latin and South America had big floats downtown. There were TONS of Latinos who were going nuts for their countries. It was pretty fun to see.
One really cool thing that I got to do for my Spanish Institutions class was to go and see a session of the Senate (which although is the upper house in the Spanish Legislative branch, it doesn’t have much power). Regardless, I’ve learned that one of the powers that the Legislative houses in Spain have is a weekly control session of the government (President and Ministers). So…I got to see a control session – which means that I saw the President of Spain: Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Pretty effing sweet! There weren’t really a lot of people there either, and we were pretty close. Definitely one of the cooler things I’ve done here.
This past weekend I went to Paris with my friend Michael, who is studying in London, and my friend Katie who is studying in Lyon. Of all the cities in Europe I’ve been to so far, Paris is definitely my favorite. It’s got such a different vibe from everywhere else I’ve been, and although I still detest French culture, the city was amazing. I got there Thursday night, and walked around Notre Dame at night. The next morning we went inside Notre Dame, and then to Sainte Chapelle, a cathedral with all stained glass windows. After that, I went to the Lovre and saw the Mona Lisa and Code of Hammurabi. With the exception of those two things, I thought that overall the Lovre was somewhat overrated. After the Lovre, we went to the top of the only skyscraper in Paris, Tour Montparnasse, where we got to see the most amazing view of the city. We then had a picnic of bread, wine and cheese under the Eiffel Tower and went to the top of it once it got dark.
Saturday morning we went to the Palace of Versailles, which was pretty neat, but a relatively typical royal residence for Europe. After, we went to Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur, which was on a big hill that had a great view of the city also. There were so many people up near Sacre Coeur and street performers too. The coolest street performer I ever saw, this freestyle soccer dribbler, was doing AMAZING tricks up there on a small little platform. It was absolutely ridiculous! That night we went out for an authentic French dinner. The menu was all in French, and although Katie tried to translate as best she could, I honestly didn’t know what I had ordered. I ended up getting a salad with duck on it for my first course. Only days later did I find that it was actually duck gizzards. Fantastic. It was somewhat decent, though. For the second course I had some sort of meat. For dessert I had these fantastic profiteroles with chocolate. When we got to the restaurant, it was kind of empty, but throughout our dinner tons of people came in. We noticed, though, that all the people coming in were men. Only when a bunch started petting each other’s heads, did we realize that it was a restaurant in the gay part of Paris, which was a funny surprise!
On Sunday, Katie left back for Lyon in the morning and Michael and I went to the Jewish Museum and then to the Musee D’Orsay, which I liked a lot more than the Lovre. It had a bunch of famous paintings, especially Impressionist works, which were neat to see. I left back for Madrid that night with lots of memories and tons of pictures. Check out the links at the end of the post.
Let’s see what’s coming up? Thursday, I’m going with my friend Emily down to the way south of Spain and then to Gibraltar and Tangier, Morocco. I’m pretty excited for that! 3 countries in 2 days…should be exciting. I also booked tickets to Israel for December 14-21, and I’m excited to go back there too!

Paris 1 album link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2290856&l=92432&id=3624742

Paris 2 album link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2290881&l=8b06a&id=3624742


Until next week,
Hasta Luego!