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Published: March 10th 2008
What a weekend. We flew out Friday at noonish since flights were randomly cheaper than the train. We get to Madrid and we are going to take the metro downtown to find a hostel. Technical problem, the airport is connected to the city by one line and there is a train stuck in that line. So we get a cab after waiting a while since the bus drivers are on strike. We get dropped off at the Prado and walk up the street to find a hostel since we had serious trouble booking online. Randomly find an awesome, cheap hostel within 10 minutes.
Friday we see the Prado and hit all of the major paintings from my Spanish Painters class: Velazquez, El Greco, Goya. Laura and I were the nerdy tour guides telling our friends everything we remembered from class. The only one i didn´t see that I wanted to was Goya´s Fusilamientos which was in restoration. It was a pretty amazing museum though.
Saturday we got up early and just Mike and I went off to do our own thing while the girls had a more relaxed day. We hit Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol before catching
Velazquez outside
His stuff was soooo cool to see. There is a room with Las Meninas in it that had about 12 paintings we saw in class.a train to El Escorial. On trains and buses were the only time we sat during the day. The monastery was unreal. Absolutely enormous. I have picture from the outside but you can´t take any inside so you have to buy postcards. We did an unguided tour and essentially ran all over the whole palace for a few hours. My favorite parts were the Basilica and the Biblioteca. We are in the gift shop, 3:10 PM and we ask how to get to the Valle de los Caidos. ¨There is one bus each day and it leaves in five minute.¨ We sprint through the streets only to stop and ask for directions twice. We walk onto the bus, the last two people on, and before we could sit the bus was moving.
The Valle de los Caidos was unreal. First on top of the mountain is supposedly the largest free standing cross on earth, 152.4 meters. I don´t take a lot of pictures, but I have 15 of a cross. The Basilica in the mountain was soooo spooky. Again, no photos so I bought postcards. It was cavernous and dug by 20,000 prisoners into solid stone. It´s supposedly larger
than Saint Peter´s in Rome but they wouldn´t consecrate the whole thing so it´s technically smaller. The statues inside reminded me of a mix of the vibe of Gotham City in Batman and the Ring Wrathes from Lord of the Rings. Franco´s tomb was very simple but just thinking of who he was and the environment it´s in makes it pretty intense.
When we get back to Madrid we cross the street from the train station to check out the Reina Sofia. Randomly, free addmission that day. Neither of us know that much about modern out so we just check out Dali and Picasso. There weren´t a lot of Dali works but what was there was cool. But there was more Picasso than I knew existed. There was an exhibition from the Paris Picasso Museum and I don´t exagerate in saying that I probably saw 100 to 125 Picassos that day. We spent about 15 minutes looking at Guernica. It was my favorite painting of the whole trip. It was absolutely massive. There was so many things to see in it and after being at the war memorial earlier that day, it was really intense.
Then by 11
El Escorial
Monasery, Church, Library, Palace, Art Gallery. Tons to see. AM Sunday I was in Sevilla unpacked and catching up on sleep. It was a whirlwind.
Sunday afternoon we hung out with Aaron´s friends that he randomly met in Cadiz for 5 or 6 hours. They were all suuuuper nice and it was good to be able to practice my Spanish a little with some nativos.
Nothing too exciting this week but I cannot wait for peoples to come on Saturday! I´m resisting the temptation to make any countdowns of days or hours. Hasta Luego.
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