Madrid Day 2

To start the morning off on the second day, Alex and I were introduced to European breakfast. They believe the day should start off with fresh squeezed fruit juice and I wholeheartedly agree. My favorite juice was fresh peach juice- it was amazing. The second most amazing thing about European breakfasts are the croissants. Basically the bread things that we call croissants here in the United States are dry, hard, nasty versions of the delicate, flaking, delicious pastry that is a croissant. To top of the deliciousness, the Spaniards put chocolate in some of these croissants. Not the super sweet sugary version of chocolate that we are used to, but a more bitter natural chocolate that is pretty amazing. Ha to sum up the foodgasm paragraph- the breakfast selection in Spain is the best.

After breakfast we were given a bus tour of Madrid. A local woman served as our guide for the morning and allowed us to see what a real life Spaniard woman was like. Her name was Mari Luce and she was amazing! We started in the heart of Madrid at a park that is dedicated to Don Quixote and worked our way from there. We toured the grounds of the Royal Palace in Madrid and stood in awe of the huge building. As I mentioned, one of my reasons for going to Spain was castles. This was not a castle, it was a palace. Although the current king chose not to live there anymore, there are still working government rooms and official rooms inside. It kinda puts the White House to shame (I know bad for me to say).

Bus selfie!

The Palace in Madrid

Pretty grounds around the Palace

Best friends at the Palace

As we continued getting to know Madrid, we drove past all of the major sites. This included the futbol stadium San Bernabeu, the home to Real Madrid. We only got to drive past the outside, but it was HUGE! I am still sad we didn't get to go to a game while we were there, but it gives me an excellent reason to go back!! The streets in Madrid are very confusing as I mentioned before so I figured we had ventured far away on our tour and would have to take some time getting back to where we started. In reality, we had made a loop and were about right where we started.

Madrid City Hall

One of the oldest buildings in Madrid

Curvy streets and pretty buildings

Pretty building

We finished the tour at the Museo Nacional del Prado (the Prado Museum). I was honestly kind of worried about spending so much time in an art museum- I have 0 artistic abilities and figured it would be boring walking around. Boy was I wrong. Mari Luce took us through the museum and showed us some amazing pieces of art. Having someone explain what the painter was trying to say, what time of his life he painted the picture in, and what was going on historically makes all the difference in the world. I had an amazing time and came away from the experience with a newfound appreciation for art. The museum was hosting an exhibit featuring El Greco, a famous Spanish painter from the late 1500's. His paintings were interesting, but my favorite paintings in the museum were by Diego Velazquez. He lived at court and painted portraits of the rulers that were all in the museum. His most famous work is Las Meninas which also happened to be my favorite painting. There are so many different ways to look at it and my favorite interpretation is that Velasquez was painting you, the viewer, as the royals. Although we didn't realize it at the time, this painting is a symbol of Spain. For the rest of our trip we saw the little girls in the painting everywhere. Spain is super proud of that artwork.

Las Meninas

After the museum we decided we wanted to go back to the palace and see the inside. We took the "Royal Palace Tour" and it was amazing. The palace is stunning. There are over 1,000 rooms and all of them are decorated to the max. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside which kind of helped me to focus on everything. They had guards posted in each room to keep people where they are supposed to be and make sure no one breaks the picture rule. The walls were carpeted or had porcelain inlays. The china from all of the decades was beautiful and I thought of sneaking a picture for my grandma (I didn't, those Spanish guards take their job very seriously and I totally would have been caught) The ceilings in each room were carefully thought out and frescoed or covered with expensive tapestries. The Spanish private clock collection was on display throughout the rooms and some of the coolest clocks I've ever seen were there. The royal chapel inside the palace was beautiful- still one of my favorites even after all of the cathedrals we saw in the rest of the country. One of my favorite things was all of the chandeliers- every main room had a huge chandelier with hundreds of details that were different on each one. My favorite room was the throne room, which is still the "official throne room" for the royalty of Spain. It was beautiful, all red and black probably to be imposing. The lion is found everywhere in Spain, even on their flag, and there were lions guarding the thrones in the throne room. Do yourself a favor and google "Royal Palace Madrid Inside" and look through the pictures. It will be worth it I promise- it was absolutely stunning.

The King's dressing room

The Throne Room

View from inside the gates- the doors to enter

After we made it through the palace we stopped by the royal armory and checked out all of the armor throughout the years. There was some cool armor- the Spanish kept track of their historical armor through the years and it was fun to see how the knights must have looked. There were giant broad swords, maces, shields, daggers, lances and crossbows. There were kings who fought in head to toe chain mail and other kings who only wore a chest plate. Some suits of armor even included funny armor shoes and armor for the horses.

After leaving the palace we did a little shopping and then set out on a walking adventure to find the Hard Rock Cafe. My dad collects the guitar pins and I thought that would be a pretty cool thing to bring him. Unfortunately I had the map and was trying to navigate and I got us pretty turned around. I usually rely on my phone with Google maps to get anywhere and using a real life map ended up getting us on the right street but about 2 miles in the wrong direction. Ha after we discovered this, I was relieved of my map duties for the rest of the trip and we slowly made our way into the right direction. Getting "lost" in Madrid was pretty awesome tho. We wandered through streets we wouldn't have seen and got to see how everything was connected.

The circular route we took to Hard Rock

We found Hard rock and I was able to pick out a super cool Don Quixote guitar pin for my dad. We slowly made our way back to the hotel and grabbed some delicious pizza and lemon Fanta for dinner. Lemon Fanta kind of rocks my world and it isn't available in the US. I'm pretty sad about it!

Random frog statue we found in our wanderings

Madrid is stunning at night

Madrid was a beautiful city and we were only able to scratch the surface. I would love to go and spend a month or a year in this city... let's be honest I would love to live there!! Madrid, I will return. I still have a million things left to do :)