Today, October 8, my friends Devon and Alex and I went to the small town of Alcalá de Henares. It is a 45 minute train ride outside of Madrid, and is part of the Madrid Community. We decided to go because our original weekend plans got cancelled, and Alex's teacher had recommended it.
We started the morning off very chilly, and stopped into a cafe for hot chocolate and a donut. It was very delicious chocolate, between the consistency of American hot chocolate and the typical Spanish chocolate. After warming ourselves up, we headed out to explore the city.
Our first stop was el Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes. It is a museum dedicated to Cervantes, the writer of Don Quixote, and is located in the house he grew up in. We got to wander around and see where he lived as a child, as well as some publications of Don Quixote in other languages that were on display.
On our way to the Museo de Cervantes, we walked through a medieval festival as it was beginning to open. It turns out that this week is la Semana Cervantina, where Cervantes and the time period he lived in are celebrated. After we left the museo, we wandered around the festival. It was filled with food, jewelry, leather products, candy, incense, and many other medieval products. We wandered our way through and ended up at Los Universos de Cervantes, which has a history of Cervantes and more about Don Quixote. So we went inside and learned even more about the famous author.
After this, we stopped for lunch at the festival. Alex and Devon both had skewers of meat, while I had a ham and cheese quesadilla. We all had a beer to go with our Renaissance food. It was very delicious. After that, we tried some of the handmade fresh potato chips, which were amazing, and then stopped for dessert at another stand. We had torte vasca, which is a creme based pie that originated in the Basque country.
When we set out again, we wanted to find the "university" mentioned in my guidebook. There is the well-known Universidad de Alcalá, but we were looking for the old university. We finally found it after lunch, but it cost money to enter (my book failed to mention this) and wasn't open in the afternoon because of the festival. So we didn't end up touring it, but we got to spend more time at the festival. There was so much to see, they even had mini carnival rides for children. I found a beautiful silver ring that I really liked, but it was 35 euros and I have already spent my money on food...Devon said that is just wasn't meant to be. Hopefully I will be able to find one at El Rastro, the weekly market in Madrid.
We wandered around some more through the festival and the town, just to see what else was around. However, since it's a pretty small town and it was siesta time, there wasn't much else to see. So we headed back to the train station to head back to Madrid. All in all, it was a fun trip, especially because it didn't require much planning and we just got to explore a nearby area.
Pictures to come, I have to steal them from Alex
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