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Published: August 3rd 2006
Famous Corner in Madrid.
This is a famous building in Madrid, the Metropolis. So to save myself hours upon hours of sitting in front of a computer I decided to split the blogs covering the last five weeks of my life.
Madrid exceeded all my expectations. Before this trip to Spain I had only been to Barcelona and people had always been telling me that I didn't miss a thing by not seeing Madrid. After spending three days there I couldn't disagree more. Don't get me wrong I love Barcelona, and you'll here more about it in the next blog, but Madrid is unique and a completely different animal than Barcelona.
Pamela and I arrived in Madrid around seven in the morning after taking an overnight train from San Sebastian. This was my first sleeper car train ride in Europe since my post college five week speedy tour of the continent. And the first time I had been privileged enough to be travelling in a first class sleeper coach. WOW! Basically we had our own couchette with two beds and...a SHOWER. Not really sure who takes a shower on a train, I can't say that I tried it but it did give me a nice laugh just seeing it. So back to
Nice Fountain
Madrid is a bustling city filled with great architecture. Madrid.
Madrid is a sprawling city with lots of cars, traffic, and people hurrying about but somehow still manages to retain that old world feel with small alleys, buildings that are hundreds of years old. You can just feel the history while walking around the city. I was strolling about one day and just glanced to my left and noticed a cornerstone on a regular building that read 1690. It took me a second to come to grips with this, for over 300 years people had been walking past that same building. Try to think of all the major world events that have happened during the last 300+ years, we could probably list a thousand different events and still be thousands short of a complete list. The city is filled with grand fountains, huge open plazas, famous museums, grand boulevards and so much more.
Once again I've started rambling, I think it's just the architecture buff in me that notices a small detail while walking around admiring the overall scene. So our time in Madrid was filled much the same as it was in San Sebastian...filling our stomachs with Cafe con Leche, Cerveza and Tapas and our time
Arch De Triumph
Just another example of the stunning architecture around the city. sitting around soaking up the atmosphere and shooting the shit.
Probably the biggest highlight of Madrid for me was my visit to El Museo de arte Thyssen-Bornemisza. Can't honestly say my life has been filled with many trips to art museums. And most of those few trips were spent moving as quickly as possible towards the exit, but this museum brought out a whole new me. I genuinely enjoyed myself the entire time I was there, I even left with a new favorite Impressionist artist, Pissaro. I know Madrid is famous for the Prado, which I never went to visit, but for anyone visiting Madrid I highly recommend visiting this private collection of over eight hundred works of art.
So it was off to the train station to catch an overnight train to Barcelona which meant another night of first class treatment followed by...drum roll please...meeting the folks at the airport.
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anonymous
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The square is the Plaza Mayor, the famous building in the picture is Madrids Town Hall.