We left for Madrid Saturday morning bright and early. On the way to Madrid we stopped at El Escorial. El Escorial is another palace/monastery in Spain that was built for King Felipe II. It is where a large portion of the kings and queens are buried. There is also a library, monastery, basilica, and infirmary inside of it.
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| El Escorial |
Next, we made our way to our hotel which I’m pretty sure was in the sketchiest part of Madrid. Oh, well. It was just irritating that it was too far to walk to the main city center. After checking in we got back on the bus and made our way to the Prado. I really enjoyed seeing the Prado although I wish we could have had more time to spend there. The one downside to the excursions to museums with the group is that you have to go at the group pace and you don’t necessarily get to see everything. Jesus takes us to the main artworks and explains them to us but we often skip the others in between. I literally read every plaque and look at every painting when I go to museums so I guess I’m a little crazy. One of the best parts of the Prado was when Jesus got in a fight with a French tourist in the museum. He was in the middle of explaining a series of paintings by El Greco when this man and woman start backing into him and intruding on our group. He turns to the man and tells him that he is ‘mal educado’ (poorly educated) and that ‘I can speak French when I want to.’ They go back and forth for a solid minute and Jesus just responds to every sassy remark this French man says to him with, ‘you are poorly educated.’ I thought I was going to lose it. Every one of our tours we wear headsets and Jesus has a microphone so we can hear him better. Thus, this entire confrontation took place on the headsets as well. So good.We saw several famous artworks by Goya such as ‘The Third of May.’ I got to see "Las Meninas" by Velazquez as well.
Later that night after dinner we saw the musical ‘Hair’ in Spanish. I really enjoyed it. It was kind of strange to see an American musical based on events and culture from America in Spain though.
The next day we went to ‘El Palacio Real’ (Royal Palace). It is the official residence of the king of Spain but is really only used for state ceremonies. We toured the inside of the building as well as the grounds outside. There was an entire room of armor from all of the previous kings.
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| El Palacio Real |
We then made our way to the Reina Sophia which is another art museum in Madrid. It was a really short museum visit and I wish we could have spent more time there. I did get to see ‘Guernica’ by Picasso though which was awesome. It was such a massive painting.
After La Reina Sophia we were set free for break. An entire week freeeeeeee!
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