[Museums]:
We bought a combined ticket to visit three museums in Madrid at a slight discount. I was only able to take photos in the Reina Sofia because the other two did not allow photography.
Reina Sofia Museum
I'm glad we started out at the Reina Sofia because there was no line when we got there and the museum had just opened. It was nice to get a head-start on the crowd. The Reina Sofia had paintings, sculptures, contraptions, and photography. I can not appreciate art that "I could do myself if I wanted to," so I thought some of the art in this museum was not worth the admission price. For example, there were stacks of used tires and a pile of crumpled up paper. ---seriously?
There were some very interesting paintings. I also like the contraptions that were motorized. One contraption had a lawnmower engine and it drew art. Another hung from the ceiling and randomly started shaking and making noise.
El Prado Museum
The next day, we went to the Prado Museum. I'm so glad we bought the combined ticket because we were able to pass the long line of people who were waiting to buy a ticket. The Prado is HUGE! There are all kinds of paintings there that I have seen only in books from school or in a movie... Unfortunately, no pictures allowed, although I got one from my phone of an in-house artist painting his own rendition of a painting while it was on display.
While I recognized many of the famous paintings by Goya, Velazquez, El Greco, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, some of my favorite displays in the museum visit were the marble sculptures, including a horse head sculpture dating back to 515 BC!. Our visit to the Prado lasted about 4 or 5 hours! There is so much to see! I learned a lot from my visit and I saw so many works of art that I was able to tell who painted some of them (from the style) by the end of my visit. El Greco is the easiest for me to distinguish.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Spain bought this collection from a German Baron who married a Miss Spain 1961. It was one of the world's finest private art collections. I enjoyed it perhaps more than the Prado or the Reina Sofia because of the types of art that was displayed. This museum had art that I would like to hang in my house!
[City Touristic Bus] (open-top bus):
Katrina and I took the two routes of the Touristic Bus around the city. You get headsets to listen to a recorded tourguide while sitting in the open-top double-decker bus. The tour was nice to get a sense of the basic layout of the city and also of the location of the major sites.
[Rowing a boat in Retiro Park]
The tourist bus is hop-on, hop-off, which means you can get off at any of the stops to explore at your own leisure then go back to the stop and resume the tour on another bus. We got off the bus at Retiro park to rent a row boat in the park. It was around 5€ for 45 mins.
[Royal Palace in Madrid]
We found air conditioning inside the Royal Palace after walking across town in the 92˚ heat. Walking into the royal palace is like walking into history. I was amazed by the degree of historic preservation of the rooms. I wish I could have taken photos to show everyone all the gold leaf details in the ceilings and especially the throne room. Each room had a distinct design. One section was the pharmacy, where there was a stockpile of medicines and spices. Shelves on the walls were filled with ceramic crocks that once held the different ingredients. Back in the day, they even had a chemist there to make the concoctions!
There was also an armory where knights' armor was displayed, along with guns and knives.
The Royal Family no longer lives at the Royal Palace, partly because it is so old.
[ABC Time] Adria, Bridget, Corey ---Representing IU in Madrid!
Adria and Bridget saw that I was in Madrid after they had already decided to go as well, so we facebooked each other and decided that we would hang out. Strangely, as Katrina and I were walking back from the Palace, we crossed paths with Adria and Bridget in the street!!! Poor Bridget was coming back from the store to buy some things she needed because her bag was lost during her flight. As far as I know, it is still missing--with all her souvenirs in it.
Dinner with IU girls in Madrid!
We ate dinner later that night at el Museo de Jamon (Musuem of Ham) with one of Adria's long time friends from Texas who is currently living in Madrid.
Egyptian Temple -2200 years old/ Crystal Palace in Retiro Park. / Kebap.
Adria, Bridget and I spent the next day together exploring some more of Madrid. We first visited the 2200 year old temple that was given to Spain from Egypt. Apparently, the temple would have been flooded from a dam that Egypt planned to build, so they sent it to Spain on a boat. We could only see the outside because the inside was closing for the siesta.
We took the metro to Retiro park to see the Crystal Palace because it was another scorcher out there. The park is much larger than what I thought it was...it took us a long time walking through the park to find the Crystal Palace. Unfortunately, the crystal palace was empty at the time. I think the Reina Sofia museum occasionally holds temporary exhibits in the crystal palace. There were 2 black swans outside the crystal palace and several turtles and carp swimming in the adjacent pond. In a different pond, there were hundreds of goldfish swimming around. We noticed that several goldfish were swarming a duck while it was cleaning itself on that pond. It looked like they were trying to eat it or something, but the duck didn't seem to mind, so maybe they were eating the stuff that the duck picked off itself???
Discovering the Turkish Döner Kebap. "rotating roast"
The girls introduced me to a new food called the Kebap. Its a wrap filled with meat that has been roasted on a skewer. When you order, they shave the cooked meat from the skewer as it is still rotating around the cooker, then they place it in a wrap with yogurt and lettuce, tomato, etc. It is so good! Two thumbs up.
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