A Very Long Adventure

So today began with a breakfast buffet... that my roomie and I did not really get to enjoy because we'd misunderstood the times. We were supposed to be downstairs and ready go go by 9:30, not downstairs for breakfast at 9:30. So I chugged my peach juice, stuffed the rest of it in a napkin, and we dashed out to the bus!

Mmmmm breakfast foods

The bus took us to el Museo del Prado, a lovely little art museum. And by little I mean giant, but that's not the point. We took a tour, focusing on El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. So I got to see a lot of religious pictures, courtesy of El Greco. And Las Meninas, from Velazquez, and a portrait of the family of Carlos IV, including his wife who got pregnant 24 times, courtesy of Goya. Don't worry though, she only had 14 of them. Only.

I couldn't really take pictures in the museum, so I only have one of a street performer who dressed up like Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter from Alice. He pretty much just sat there, pretending to drink tea, but he was very, very made up. It was pretty cool.

Museo Prado, Sidewalks, Reina Sofia, birds, Reina Sofia

After Museo del Prado, we duckling-trotted on over to el Museo de la Reina Sofia (see photos of sidewalk adventures...), then they turned us loose for 15 minutes to find snacks. I found a lemon Fanta (did you know that was a flavor??) and sat on a bench in the plaza by the museum with a few other kids. One of them had gotten potato chips, and was giving the crumbs to the birdies, which began inciting mini bird riots. Good entertainment, they're just so cute.

More art en la Reina Sofia! Modern this time though. Picasso and Dalí. We saw La Guernica, which I definitely could not take a picture of, and a lot of interesting surrealism paintings from Dalí. Not the clocks though, they did not have the clocks.  

The Reina Sofía was the end of the planned activities, so six of us went wandering the streets, and stumbled upon this pizzeria called Diablovetta (I think), which turned out to be really yummy. Also 5/6 girls in the group went to either high school or college in Colorado. And the DU people are really outnumbering the group, because ISA is one of our partner programs. It's kind of silly. There were only 2 of us at the lunch but I think there's roughly 8 of us, plus 2 CU people and one CC girl. Craziness. 

After lunch, myself, my roomie and another girl decided to go wander (sorta). We were on a mission to find some shopping locations, so we started off for Punta del Sol. We'd given our map to a girl who was taking the subway home alone, so we were not exactly equipped for this adventure. It was a lot of fun to explore the city though. We ran into the Plaza Mayor on our way there, so you guys get to see me for the first time in these photos! It's beautiful. The crazy thing about it is that you're bustling around this crowded, tall city, and all of a sudden you find this pocket of open space, and it's so pretty.

Palacio y Catedral

After the Plaza Mayor, we finally found the Punta del Sol, so I bought my token souvenir thimble (I was shocked they actually had them) and we stopped in a McDonald's to use the restroom. McDonald's is nice here. Two floors, nice decorations, etc. Why don't we get nice McDonald's??

Anyway, then we wandered to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). Which is basically the largest horizontal building I've ever seen ever. What do they do with all that space?? We wandered along that for a while, then turned a corner and ran into another plaza between the Palacio Real and the Catedral de Madrid. Gorgeous, both of them. That's where I took the two photos on the bottom of this collage. The white one is the Palacio, the blue/grey one is the Catedral.

Fotos de la catedral

We decided to go explore the Catedral, since chances were good it wasn't too expensive. At first we saw a sign that said you could go to the top of the cupola, but it turns out that it was closed as of 14:30, and it was now almost 17:00. So we just went into the main cathedral room instead. Here's photos. It was very colorful for a church, I didn't expect such bright colors, especially the ones in the stained-glass windows and the ceiling!

We also toured the crypt of the church, which was slightly creepy but mostly cool. There were even some graves that had been laid within the last year, we didn't realize that people could still be buried there! 

We then decided to take the Metro home, since we were eons away from our hotel. We made it through that process mostly fine (buying tickets was an adventure) but then we got out of the station... and had no idea where our hotel was. So we walked for another 30 minutes, but obviously found it since I'm posting this!

Overall, a very busy but very fun day, I'm having a great time!