Madrid

Hola amigos, que acabamos de llegar de Madrid! We had a week off for the half term break and decided to take advantage.

Day 1: On Wednesday we started with Museo del Prado, which is huge and houses works from Velasquez, Goya, Bosch, Reubens, Rembrandt, Rafael, Caravaggio… It was amazing, but very tedious and we decided that Renaissance Art is not our cup of tea! We also explored lots of plazas (not hard as they are on every corner!) and ate tapas (a fancy word for expensive appetizers).

Day 2: We went to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Which we enjoyed more as it was full of masterpieces from Monet, Degas … Sorry we'll stop boring you about the artists! We also visited the Royal Palace which was awe inspiring. In the Royal Armory we saw suits of armor that were worn by royalty centruries ago.

Oh yeah… did we mention how cold it was???

Day 3: We took a tour of Avila and Segovia. We spent about 4 hours in transit and 5 hours exploring with a bilingual guide and a group of mixed languages! We saw a Roman Aqueduct that dated back to Jesus’ time, a Cathedral, a castle (the one that Disneyland castle is modeled after), and a Roman Wall. We got rained on for most of the walking tour but… Se la vie!

Day 4: We enjoyed some tasty churros con chocolate (a traditional Spanish breakfast)… this is one ritual the states should think about adopting! Then we went to Museo Sorolla. This was "the best art… of all the art…" We enjoyed lunch and a long leisurely walk in El Parque Retiro and then went to our final museum, the Museo de la Reina Sofia, where we saw Picasso’s Guernica!

Finally, on our last night in Spain we slept in the airport… too cheap to spring for the extra night just to wake up at 3:30 for our 6:30 flight.