On Saturday I went on another solo sightseeing trip to El Templo de Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple that had been given to Madrid as a present in 1968 as a thank you for helping save temples in Egypt. I must admit that before I came to Madrid I'd never heard of any of the sights. It's not like Paris where everyone's heard of The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Louvre,... etc. but I certainly didn't expect one of Madrid's sights to be an Egyptian temple! It's made up of arches leading up to the main temple and is surrounded by artificial pools and a fountain as well as sand and more tropical trees.
When I was little I was fascinated by the ancient Egyptians. I can remember going to see a visiting collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts from the British Museum (I was living in Hong Kong) with my mum, my friend and her mum and going round really slowly looking at everything and reading the descriptions. I couldn't understand why my friend and her mother had gone round so quickly when I'd found it so interesting! I think I was probably about 6 at the time but it's a memory that's stuck with me and I still have the book with photos from the exhibition which is written in both English and Chinese. I had a couple of other books too and loved studying the ancient Egyptians at school, in fact I loved history until secondary school where I was put off it by my teacher! Anyway, it was a chance for me to revive my interest for this ancient civilisation.
The entry to the temple was free, a rare occurrence for Madrid where you have to pay for most tourist attractions. I had to wait about 10-15 minutes in a queue as they only allow a certain amount of people in there at once, due to its size and age, but it was worth it. There were two rules for inside the temple, no flash photography and don't touch the walls (fair enough seeing as the stone's from at least 200 BC), so unfortunately my photos from inside aren't that great!
Once inside, the temple was split into several small chambers with a corridor connecting them. The walls were engraved with pictures and hieroglyphics of scenes with Egyptian gods. In order to protect the stone, the temple's fairly dark inside but you could press buttons next to each description (in Spanish and English) of an engraving to turn a light on to see it for a while. There was a film about the temple showing in one room and another room taken up with the old stone gate to the temple while two other rooms were empty with descriptions of what would have happened in them and another, in the centre of the temple, was supposed to be the most important room where only priests were allowed to enter.
They've turned the upstairs area into a museum about the temple complete with a model of how it would have looked (apparently they reassembled it in the wrong order), information about the temple's history and some ancient engraved stones in glass cabinets. I was lucky to be able to go up there as when I'd been before with the Mónicas and Carlota it was closed "for the summer".
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| El Templo de Debod |
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| Ancient Egyptian temple in Madrid's Parque del Oueste |
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| Engravings inside the temple |
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| Inside the most important room of the temple |
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| More engravings |
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| The old stone gateway |
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| Not sure the fountain was part of the original design! |
That night I went to J & J's again for my first ever Saturday intercambio (not that much different to Wednesday or Thursday but maybe less people). Afterwards we went to the "Gin and Tonic Place", I don't actually know its real name! It specialises in gin an tonic and has a huge number of different gins and spices, I didn't know gin and tonic could be so varied. They're quite expensive, between 6 and 12 euros, but they're strong and actually taste nice (I don't usually drink G&T) so worth the money.
The next day I went with a friend to go to a "real" Chinese restaurant. At first I was a bit sceptical as the restaurant is in the underground car park of Plaza de Espana, not really when you'd expect to find it! There are lots of Chinese people in Madrid running shops and restaurants. In Montecarmelo there are probably about 3 chinos (Chinese shops) and in the centre there are plenty more. I enjoy being nerdy trying to read the characters on the shop names and being able to correct myself by reading the Spanish translation! He said that this particular restaurant was supposed to be really good, authentic Chinese food but I'd never really seen anywhere like that outside of China so I didn't really believe him. However, I was mistaken. The name of the 饭馆 fàn guǎn (restaurant) was written in Chinese characters and the menu was in Chinese, Spanish and English. I was happy to see 包子 bāozi (Chinese steamed dumplings containing meat and vegetables, a dish that had become a favourite in Nanjing last summer) at the top of the list so ordered, all in Chinese, 4 of these along with 炒饭 chǎofàn (fried rice) and 鸡肉蔬菜 jīrǒushūcài (chicken and vegetables) and water, 水 shuǐ to drink. In the corner of the little restaurant there was even a TV showing Chinese music videos with Chinese character subtitles and the staff were chatting away to each other in Mandarin, it really was like stepping into China! I sat there feeling smug when I could understand things, not a nerd at all... If anyone's interested, here's a link to some good reviews about the place. It's in Spanish though, I couldn't find anything about it in English! There are better photos on there as well.
http://www.minube.com/rincon/yulong-el-restaurante-chino-de-plaza-de-espana-a705451
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| Not the best of photographs but this is the restaurant I've been raving about for the last paragraph. It's nothing fancy but that's why I liked it, so Chinese! |
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