Two days in Madrid!

Madrid was AMAZING! There are so many things I could say about Madrid, and Spain in general, it is quite possibly my favorite place in Europe thus far! We got into Madrid Sunday morning, and took the Metro into the city from the airport. After three transfers, we walked out of Puerta del Sol and made our way to our hostel.


After we dropped off our bags we had to get out and explore Madrid. We knew we were going to go to the Prado later that day since on Sunday evenings it was free for everyone. After taking 6 years of Spanish, I was surprised to see how much I actually remembered from my classes. I remembering wondering why it we had vocabulary lessons on categories like the airport and restaurants, and thinking, “Will this really come up in conversation?” After talking to a few people I started to become more confident in my Spanish.

We made our way to the Prado where the line to get in was wrapped around the building. We finally made our way in, and I already knew that there were a few pieces I wanted to see, especially paintings by Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco. The Prado was not as daunting of a task to get through as the Louvre, but it was still pretty massive. It is a completely different feeling looking at small photo of a painting, and seeing a canvass take up the entire wall and to be standing right in front of it.

After leaving the Prado, continued to walk around Madrid, and eventually made it back to our hostel. We got a late dinner, and headed to one of many disco techs in Madrid to go dancing. We got back to our hostel later that night, and I couldn’t wait to see the rest of this amazing city in the morning.

We saw a lot on Monday, and learned a lot about the Spanish culture. It was a much sunnier day in comparison to the clouds and rain we had on Sunday, which only made the day better. We went to the Plaza del Toros right away. This is the famous bullring in Madrid, it was once the largest in the world, and the practice of bullfighting is an old tradition of the Spaniards. We got a tour of the ring, and got to walk down to the center arena where all the action happens.

After seeing the bullring, we made our way to the famous, Parque de el Retiro. It is an enormous park, and I can only imagine how beautiful it would be in the summer. There were fountains at ever major turning point in the park, and it was so big you almost felt as though you were in a maze. There was a pond near the center of the pond, and a few people had even rented row boats.

We made our way through the park, and walked towards the Reina Sofia Museum. It was filled with paintings and sculptures all done by Spanish artists. Once again there were a few items that I needed to see before I left Madrid. Number one on the list was Guernica by Pablo Picasso. It is one of his most well known paintings, that depict the horrors and tragedy of war.

When we left the museum we walked back to our hostel to regroup, and met our new roommate for the night. Her name is Adi, she was actually born in Israel, and has lived throughout Europe, and was now studying abroad for the semester in Florence. We got to get to know her pretty well, and then we got some bad news. Our flight from Madrid to Barcelona was cancelled because of snow! Of all the things to happen and to disrupt our break, snow was the last thing we thought it could be.

This bump in the road got me a little stressed, and we kept getting emails saying it was cancelled and then it wasn’t cancelled. We ended up rescheduling our flight for the next day and booking our hostel for another night. Even though it made me a little crazy, it all worked out in the end, and we already knew what we were going to be doing the next day. I was exhausted, and decided to get a good night’s sleep and go to bed.

Pictures: Madrid, Spain