May 24 2023

Today was our end-of-the-semester-getting-ready-to-go-home workshop, but before that I took my last tour of the Teatro Real. This was the technical tour. Everyone I'd talked to had raved about it and highly recommended it, but it's offered less frequently than the other tours, so it never really worked with my schedule and this was the last one offered before I left Madrid, so I needed to make it work. (I was a little late for the workshop, but it was worth it, sorry Amy.) I had already seen most of the Teatro at this point (thanks Hortensia), but I got to see the backstage area closer up. We weren't allowed to take any pictures because they want to keep the technology under wraps, secret secret. It's crazy how giant the backstage space is, and how massive all the machinery is. The Teatro has four different stages that rotate in a circle, so one is on stage where the audience can see, and one is behind it, and the two others are under those two stages. That's how they can change out these huge sets super quickly, and they can have sets for multiple productions up at once on different stages so they can rehearse/show at the same time. The tour guide was an engineer, so he was super knowledgeable and had a lot of insights to share.

At the end of the tour we went out on the balcony and I talked to the tour guide. I told him what a big fan of the opera I am, we talked about all the shows from this season, and he insisted on taking a picture for me. Thanks Juan.

He got the .5 too. King.

Then I headed straight for the workshop. Afterwards, we were super hungry. We weren't really feeling sitting down at a restaurant, plus Larissa hadn't tried Thunder Vegan yet and wanted to, so that was the move.

Photoshoot while we waited for our food.

Last Thunder Vegan🎻🎻🎻

Then I had cherries for a snack later.