Madrid- Dia Dos

Hola!

Let me start where I left off. Last night we went on a bus tour of Madrid. It was a great experience, and allowed me to see the city and all its important places that I didn’t get to see on my way from the airport to the hotel. The architecture here is just amazing! Every other building has ornate decorations around the windows and the doorways. I have put the picture of the bus tour on facebook.

Today started by having a fabulous breakfast provided by the hotel. The theme of the meal is antioxidant, don’t ask me why. They had fruit, pastries, yogurt with a variety of toppings, meat, and many different types of juices, coffee, and milk. Then we went to el Prado. It is quite possible the most famous museum in Madrid. I am unable to show you any pictures because they wouldn’t let us take any, but I am going to remember many of these paintings. We mainly explored the works of 3 artists: el Greco, Velázquez, and Goya. They were all very talented men that offered fabulous works for their time.

El Greco was not my favorite; he painted in the mannerism style. This means that he was more interested in painting emotions than the actual event. There were a lot of Jesus paintings and they were all beautiful, but the style didn’t appeal to me as much.

I enjoyed the paintings by Velázquez. He painted realistically and tried to make his paintings appear as a photograph, a moment captured in time. This can be seen by perhaps his most famous painting Las memitas where the King and Queen are shown in a mirror as just entering a room.

Goya was also a very enjoyable painter but he was more formal and fancy than Velázquez. He even pays homage to Velázquez in his painting of the royal family. However, he went through a very dark period, called the black paintings. I can’t help but think that if anyone painted these pictures in high school it would have earned them a one way ticket to the therapist. For example this painting.

We then had some time for lunch and went to a restaurant close to the hotel. I had tortilla espanola which is nothing like tortillas in America. It is more like an egg and potato cake.

At 3 we had to meet at the palacio real, the official residence of the Spanish monarchy. To say it was lavish is an understatement! Almost every room had a fresco on the ceiling of Greek mythology and the furniture was incredibly ornate. One of the rooms had silk covered wall covered in embroidered flowers. I was unable to take pictures again but I took some pretty ones of the outside and you can view them here.

Later on we walked down the la Plaza Mayor where we met Mickey Mouse and Elvis! There isn’t much going on the la Plaza Mayor besides these characters and some restaurants. On the way there, we stopped by this market place. It was very cool because there were stands that were each separate stores and sold all sorts of food products. I bought horchata from an ice cream stand and let me tell you, it is nothing like the horchata I got back home but still very tasty.

On our way back to the hotel wee mostly just window shopped and did some actual shopping. I bought a new bag that can go over my shoulder and across my chest so it’s harder for thieves to nab it from me. And of course, I picked up a deck of cards.

I will try to post pictures here as I can but all pictures will be on my facebook and eventually snapfish. The internet at my hotel in Madrid is very slow and pictures take forever to load. I hope life is being kind to all of you and I will be back tomorrow to discuss my day in Toledo!