Madrid

Saturday, Jan 31:
It was a little chilly and rainy this morning as we waited infront of the Biblioteca Publica for our bus to Madrid. I slept a little on the way, but not as much as I would have liked. Some of the landscapes were gorgeous though, rows & rows of olive trees. We left Granada at 8:30am and checked into Hotel Moderno in the middle of Puerta del Sol in Madrid at 2pm. Whitney, Cassandra, & I have a triple. At 2:30pm we met in the lobby and Veronica gave everyone a map of the city and 10 Euro for dinner. Then we all walked to the Museo del Prado, we entered as a group but were then allowed to do our own thing after going through security. I saw so many paintings I´ve studied in Art History classes. Here´s a few big ones:
Velazquez, "Las Meninas"
Goya, "The Third of May, 1808"
El Greco, "The Holy Trinity" & "Knight with his hand on his Chest"
Raphael, "The Cardinal"
Caravaggio, "David Victorius over Goliath"
Titian, "Bacchanal of the Adrians"
Fra Angelico, "the Annunciation"
Van Der Weyden, "Descent from the Cross"
Bosh, " The Garden of Earthly Delights"
They didn´t allow photography of the paintings, so I bought a few postcards to scrapbook with later. After we left the museum we walked a little through the Parque de Buen Retiro, which is huge. There was a large pond where people were playing music and rowing boats.

Sunday, Feb. 1:
Breakfast at the hotel was the best breakfast I´ve had so far in Spain: orange juice, cafe con leche, crossiants, chocolate donuts, and cheese. We met as a group at 10;30am to leave for El Escorial (a monastary), but Veronica told us the excursion had to be cancelled. It was icing-snowing in Madrid and the road to get there was closed. So she gave us our 20 Euro for lunch and dinner and said we were free to do whatever until we met for the theater at 6:30pm.
We had seen in the lobby a flier for the Body World exhibit, which none of us had seen, so we set out walking in the snow and slush. We walked about thirty minutes to the address of the brochure and saw only single for a Titanic exhibit, none of Body World! When we asked the ticket guy about it he said that exhibit had been gone for 3 months! Ah! Us girls decided to go to the Reina Sofia Art Museum and see Picasso´s "Guernica" instead. It was HUGE, and amazing. And, the Reina Sofia was FREE because it was Sunday!
After a seista we went to Teatro Munoz Seca to watch a comedia. It was pretty funny and I understood the general plot although I wish I could have understood more of the dialogue and details.
Since it was Superbowl Sunday we set out in search of a place showing the game. We found success in an Irish bar named OReilly´s. It was pretty amusing since there were a lot of Americans and Spanairds, but it didn´t seem like a lot of people really understood the game. The game didn´t begin until 12:30am and we stayed until it ended at 4:30am! It was unfortunate we didn´t get to see any of the good funny commericals though, because it was a different broadcast network.

Monday, Feb. 2:
This morning was difficult to wake up, obviously. We went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) in the heart of Madrid. The tour was very cool, everyone was given an earpiece attached to an audioset. The tour guide wore a microphone and when she spoke normally the sound was fed into everyonés earpiece. My favorite part of the tour was that, until the very end, she was convinced that we could not understand her (the tour was in spanihs). She kept saying in the microphone "Creo que no me entiendes" (I think you don´t understand me), and we were like, "yes we freaking can!" The palace itself was gorgeous both inside and out.
After leaving the palace we got our stuff from the hotel and most of the people from the program returned to Granada. Me and three friends went and checked into our hostel and took a seista.