Madrid: Thursday

Madrid:

Wednesday evening:

We headed over to La Reína Sofía (Madrid’s Museum of Modern Art) before dinner (it’s free from 7-9pm). We first checked out the rooms on Salvador Dalí, my favorite Spanish Surrealist painter. He’s a pretty weird artist and I love it! Then we headed over to check out Picasso’s work, including La Guernica, Spain & Picasso’s most famous painting the of destruction that was caused on the Spanish town of Guernica when Hitler dropped a saturation bomb on it (with Franco’s permission to use this small Basque town in northern Spain as Hitler’s guinea pig to see what this bomb and his Air Force could do). It’s pretty intense and I loved seeing his sketches and drawings that led up to the final piece of artwork. 

After the museum, we wandered through the huge Parque de Buen Retiro, Madrid’s 300-acre park. Things were cooling down a bit by then and it was nice to take a break and do some people watching.

Thursday:

This traveling around and staying up late has really caught up to us. We slept in really late again today and after a quick café con leche and croissant, we took the metro over to El Palacio Real (Royal Palace), which is the third largest royal palace in Europe. Rick did mention to go early or late, we went right in the middle of the day and had to deal with a long line out in the sun and lots of annoying tourists filling the palace. We were amazed at the number of parents that brought their young children and were bored and annoying everyone else around them. 

By far the coolest part of the palace was the Royal Armory. There was a huge collection of armor that the Kings, Princes and horses wore back in the 15^th century, along with their weapons: spears and clubs and even guns that dated back to the 16^th century—it looked like they had a hand crank on them since gun powder wasn’t around yet?!? It was absolutely incredible to see the armor and picture what the brutal life of warfare was like back then.

 Matt and I in front of the Royal Palace

We followed the mob around and toured the incredibly ornate palace rooms, including the Royal Pharmacy that still held the old herbs and potions that were used to treat the royal family. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed in any of the rooms, so we just have pictures of the outside. 

Afterwards, we headed over to El Corte Inglés (it’s got the one-stop-shopping idea like Fred Myers, but with the class of Nordstrom). We picked up a few things for gifts and slowly made our way back to the hotel to drop off our belongings. It’s amazing how quickly the mood of a trip/ day can change. After dealing with the crowds at the palace and wandering around aimlessly, trying to find out way back (we have the crummiest map in the world that doesn’t have all the street names on it), we were both frustrated. We were able to change the mood of the day very quickly though…

Thanks to Rick Steves, we found this vegetarian buffet. I was in heaven! It’s all “to-go”, so we filled a few boxes and paid a whopping 24 euro (one of the most expensive meals so far this trip!). We made one more quick stop for a couple cervezas (which is cheaper than coke!), went back to the hotel room and gorged ourselves on the vegetarian goodness—everything that we tried was amazing. When we were paying, the woman joked that we would have enough for dinner. Ha! Little did she know who she was talking to—we devoured everything and are now in the midst of a food coma! We’ll probably head back over to El Parque Buen Retiro later on to enjoy another cool evening stroll.

 

Our vegetarian lunch!!