After my Asturias weekend I mostly planned on staying home and saving up for Morocco, but then my cousin Maya messaged me that she would be in Madrid, so I decided to head for one night to meet up with her. Maya had just finished her shows in Sweden, and was currently performing at the Teatro Real in Madrid (then off to San Sebastian and Pamplona).
I took the afternoon bus and arrived in Madrid at around 7pm. Maya was still performing, so I walkd along Gran Vía and did some window shopping, then met Maya near the theatre at around 8:30. We started the night off with some drinks in a café near Plaza Sol and caught up. We nearly lost track of time (we had plans to watch a flamenco show), but we transferred to a restaurant, and had some dinner before heading to the
tablao.
A
tablao, which is derived from
tablado (in the South, speakers tend to drop consonants between vowels), literally means "floorboard," and is the term used for a place where flamenco shows are performed. Since flamenco was born from the South of Spain, the words associated with flamenco tend to maintain the spelling of the Spanish pronunciation. The show we watched was at the
Tablao Villa Rosa, which claims to be the oldest and most prestigious
tablao in Spain.
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| Maya outside the Tablao Villa Rosa |
Flamenco is actually not just dance; it's a music style and includes cante (the singing), toque (the guitar playing), baile (the dance), and jaleo (hand-clapping, foot stomping, and cheers).
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| The stage |
There is always one guitarist and one singer, and in our
tablao we had three dancers. The first part consisted of the guitarist playing a solo. In the next three parts each of the dancers danced individually while the singer sang very emotionally.
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| The singer and the guitarist |
I snuck in a video of one of the male flamenco dancers:
We had one female dancer and two male dancers. I learned a few years ago that male dancers actually dominate flamenco (it's Hollywood that aways portrays flamenco with a female dancer). When the girl was dancing, Maya told me that she recognized her, and it turns out that they went to the same dance school in Barcelona! Such a small world.
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| So much passion |
The show was amazing (though a bit expensive), and we had a great night. The next day we met up in the morning at Atocha. Maya originally wanted to visit the Prado Museum, but when we got there the lines were too long, and she would have to leave in an hour and a half for a meeting. So instead, we decided to hang out at Retiro and enjoy the great weather.
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| We saw this pretty building |
We walked around the par and saw this pretty building (above) then checked out the Palacio de Cristal (below).
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| A selfie with the Palacio |
Here's a non-blurry pic of it. The
Palacio de Cristal (Crystal Palace) is made almost entirely of glass, and was actually built in 1887 to exhibit flora and fauna from the Philippines.
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| Made of glass, with an iron framework |
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| Quite a pretty structure |
Nowadays, it's used for art exhibits. When we visited there was an exhibit by Danh Vo entitled "banish the faceless/Reward your grace." No idea what it was all about....
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| The exhibit |
We had some coffee, talked a lot, and lost track of time (again). So we rushed back to Maya's hotel where she had a meeting with a casting director because her and several other girls from her company we're going to be in a movie (!). After the meeting we had lunch together, then she had to go to the theatre to warm up a bit. She had some time to kill before her show so we went shopping at Primark (the one in Gran Vía is
huge). Then she headed back to the theatre and I caught the 7pm bus back to Valladolid. It was a short trip, but a much needed day-off from work. And it's always lovely to meet up with family. :)
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| Enjoying the sun in Retiro :) |
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