Travels through Europe – 2/15 à 3/6

Travels have been fantastic so far – started off my trip with some time in London, which was great.  I hadn’t been there since my Freshmen/Sophomore summer of high school. Been awhile!  Saw Buckingham palace, house of commons, house of lords, tower bridge, tower of London, 10 downing street (Prime ministers house) and a bunch of other govy buildings, and St Abbey's of course.  A few other non-descript cathedrals and another really cool one -- the Church of the Templar (or Templar Church, and the knights of the Templar of Da Vinci code fame) and wandered the streets aimlessly (Covent Garden, SoHo, etc.) – Also hit up a pub and had some great Guinness (you should be jealous) – ate AWESOME Indian food several nights and spent a lot of time ogling the beautiful women at my hotel (it was FASHION WEEK at my hotel and it was a chic place let me tell you!) -- and they all have impeccable taste and such class...  definitely NOT Seattle -- or even SoCal… New York barely compares to be honest.

Saturday (3/19) I was hung over like a madman and flew to Madrid – by the time I arrived I was sober enough to drop my bags at my ridiculously elegant hotel (in London it was chic/posh nice, this is just over the top grotesque rich nice)…  and then went out siteseeing.

I spent time roaming the city, checking out puerto de sol, plaza mayor, the cathedral del almudensen (I think that is how it is spelled), the royal palace, a bunch of smaller churches and parks – and did some solid people watching.  It was sunny, but chilly (they say colder then normal, way colder!!!) – but Madrid is a beautiful city.  I went to this cute small traditional Spanish place for dinner and ate well, and was given an entire bottle of wine (I freaked out) which I couldn’t finish (but it was only 17 euro!!) before heading out on the town.

My evening was chill -- I wandered aimlessly around the city for hours, people watching, looking at bars/clubs, just enjoying the scenery, the small sidestreets, hidden roads, and more -- it was nice, very busy and I had a good time.  I didn't fall asleep until 3am, but slept until 1pm!!!  I felt on Sunday, quite rested and now totally OFF timezone :(.  After I got up I wandered around looking for a nice place to eat lunch and couldn't find anything appetizing, so I settled on good quality American food (McDonalds!:)) -- sometimes you have to do it. 

Afterwards I went to the Prado and had a fabulous time.  It is a beautiful museum, a great building with a wonderful collection.  The Spanish art doesn't always do it for me, very religious in nature -- but they had a Rembrandt on display and a wonderful special exhibit on Rueben and his Adoration of the Magi -- his work is fantastic and the exhibit (which ends in 7 days, just made it) was awesome.  It showed how he painted the original, then years later in Madrid extended it and re-painted most of it.  They use some pretty fancy technology to see the painting underneath the painting (yey for oil) and showed how he practiced painting all the characters in other paintings before making that piece.  Very cool -- there was a bunch of other great stuff, a huge collection of Goya, some nice work by Velazquez, and a neat section on El Greco... they even had a few Raphael sculptures and paintings.  There were a bunch of other artists on display there, but not that many that I knew of before hand ... They had some Bosch who I have vaguely heard of, but was unimpressed.  A good trip though -- and Sunday was "free" for everyone day!  So I saved myself 6 Euros (I think that is the student price.. I still carry my Duke Card  :))..

Monday (3/21) I had my first presentation, the real work of the trip, not worth talking about, but it went really really well (200+ folks there) -- in the evening, a bit exhausted, I was able to find a great place for Paella (after a lot of searching… turns out Paella isn’t very common in Madrid, more of a dish from Valencia) and enjoyed a nice evening of people watching and reading a book (Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson, a great read if you are going to Europe) -- it is fun to watch folks on the streets.  It has been way to cold to sit outside -- not exactly normal for here, but such is life. 

3/22 – today I spent the day working at the Spanish Subsidiary just outside Madrid, met with press for 4 hours – but 45 minutes of it was a photo shoot that I was TOTALLY unprepared for.  The guy took over 150 pictures of me in 6 different locations to get 1 photo for a magazine called Perspectivos.  I would have dressed up a lot more if I had known L, and shaved, and did my hair – oh well, he is going to send me the pictures, they are AWESOME – he was incredible… once I got over the initial embarrassment of the event (it was all over the office, people walking around, looking at me, who the hell is this guy?) it got kinda fun.  I’m hoping to replace my HORRIBLE headshot that the Studios at Microsoft took of me with one of these pictures.  I wonder if they can apply a minus 20 lbs filter?  I did an impromptu presentation and then went to lunch (famished) at 2:45, peak time as I learned.  In Spain, Lunch is the most important and largest meal of the day (typically lasting 2 hrs) – we went to a great traditional Spanish place – and I was lucky enough to be accompanied by two folks from the Sub who ordered all the food – it was amazingly good, jamón, carpaccio, vegetables (coal fired), then wonderful steak (similar to a bisteca fiorentina) and potatoes.  Full – back to the office, sat in a 3 hour meeting on Image – came home and desperately awaited restaurants to open.  After all the Spanish food I was once again craving an American delicacy, Hamburger and Papas Fritas – fortunately for me, there was a Planet Hollywood next to my hotel.  I am headed there now.

Tomorrow I plan to hit up the museum of modern art, and ses the building that caught on fire and almost burned to the ground about a month ago (it was all over the news) -- should be interesting.  Then off to Praga (Prague for you non-spanish speakers).