Sightseeing in Madrid

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So over the past week my roommates and I have gotten to cross a lot of things/places off of our list to do here in Madrid. The first thing we did was an excursion with our school after class. We were fortunate enough to go the Reina Sofía Museum, gratis! This museum along with Madrid's other two world-famous museums (El Prado and Thyssen-Bornemisza) are all situated on the same street in a beautiful part of Madrid known as the Golden Museum Triangle.

The Museo Sofía Reina was amazing and gigantic. With our school tour we only had the time to highlight a few very influential artists. We saw a lot of work from Juan Gris, Picasso, Joan Miró, and of course Dalí. My favorites were Picasso and Dalí. Luckily, we were permitted to take photos in the museum, without flash. However, one very famous Picasso work was only allowed to be photographed from other rooms (the same one in the picture below with Kristen). The Dalí work was amazing and is feautured absolutely everywhere in Madrid, so it was really cool to see the originals of what we see everyday.

This weekend I had a lot of schoolwork for UF, so we stayed local. But Saturday night we still did a lot.

We started the evening at El Prado museum. Every evening for the last two hours before close, admission is free. On Saturdays it's the last three hours. We went to the museum for a little while which was really cool, but I personally prefer Reina Sofía. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos there, but we saw some really cool work from Velazquez and lots of pretty Roman marble sculptures. The museum featured a TON of religious work, but some of it I actually really enjoyed including Bosch.

After the museum, we headed to dinner at the oldest restaurant in the world: Botín. This restaurant has been around since 1725, and even operates with the same oven! The food was good, lots of Spanish dishes, however Kristen and I both decided if we were eating in such a fancy place, we were going to order steak : ) .

Afterwards we headed to a market that I absolutely love, called San Miguel. It is an indoor farmers market pretty much. They have different stalls with everything you can imagine. Fresh ingredients, already prepared food, desserts, and lots of wine stalls. Next time I go there I will take lots of photos. So we just popped inside for some quick little desserts. Very yummy, I definitely recommend this market to everyone!

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Photos

Picasso
Don't know if you can see the line, but if you get within about ten feet of the painting a crazy alarm goes off!

Bosch
I actually just Googled this on the internet, this was one of our favorites.

Botín
The oldest restaurant in the whole world!