El Capital... Madrid

A trip to Spain would not be complete without spending a few days in the capital of the country. I had a small list of places I wanted to visit, but still had no idea what I would actually be able to see during my visit or what to expect. Franny and I decided to take the midnight bus to Madrid so we would have all of Friday in Madrid to walk around and do some sightseeing. The bus ride was 6 ½ hours long but comfortable enough that I could at least get some sleep. So we arrived in Madrid extra early, got on the metro to get closer to our hostel and then found it all before 7:30. On my hostel reservation, I had selected my arrival time to be 7 am so I figured it would be no problem to check in then. Apparently it was a problem for the little woman that was running the hostel out of a 3rd floor apartment building, considering all of the lights were off and she was whispering to us. After freaking us out at first and making us feel really uncomfortable for showing up so early, she soon warmed up to us and let us keep our bags there and said that we could check in soon and told us a place to get breakfast in the meantime. The little joint we went to had the best toast and orange juice ever and a group people that were still out from the night before, which provided plenty of entertainment for the time we had to wait to check in.
After walking around the city for a while and just getting a feel for Madrid, we decided to tackle the Prado museum. That place is so huge and has so many paintings that at one point Franny and I literally got lost… with a map. Ha. But it was incredible to see all of the famous paintings by artists I have always read about or seen in books. Greco, Goya, Valazquez… and I don’t even know how many more. It was really interesting to see the different interpretations of religious and mythological scenes. I actually just learned a lot just by looking at the paintings seeing the story they were telling. At the end though, I don’t think I could have looked at another painting of Jesus if you paid me a million dollars. We were exhausted after that and went back to the hostel for a little nap and to get ready to go to dinner. Dinner was amazing at this Italian restaurant downtown and then we were ready for a night out in Madrid!
Although cover to get in was expensive (but expected) we went to this club called Kapital, which had 7 different levels, all playing different kinds of music. Surprisingly for a Friday night however, it was not that busy and only like 3 of the floors were packed. The ground floor was the best because it had live music and the most people. There were also these blasts of air over the dance floor every few minutes, that were so refreshing and my favorite! (a nice break from the smoky air) ha. We went home early (3 is early in Spain) since we wanted to get a lot of sightseeing done the next day too.
Saturday we woke up and our first stop was Palacio Real. It was such a beautiful and gigantic building from the outside, and we wanted to go in, but the line was so incredibly long we just decided to keep walking toward the other side of the city to see what we would stumble across on our way to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. We went out of our way to walk through this plaza, and thank god we did because it had street performers in crazy costumes and all of these artists painting and drawing. I can’t decide who my favorite was… the man completely covered in mud or the 250 lb man in a Spiderman costume (he was serious). So strange, yet so captivating. Ha.

Then we went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum where we saw hundreds or more paintings. I actually liked this museum way more than the Prado because it had more of a variety of artwork and some of my more favorite artists like Monet, Kirchner, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Kandinsky and tons more that I am in love with. I found my new favorite painting there… the colors were incredible and I just wanted to paint so badly after seeing it… very inspiring. They also had a very interesting exhibition called La Sombra (the shadow), which was a collection of paintings where the artists captured light and shadow and was really cool. The earliest paintings were of a people actually painting shadows on walls and such, which I had never seen. It was by far my favorite part of the trip.
Painting with Three Spots Wassily Kandinsky

We were ready for some shopping after being in a museum for the afternoon. We were trying to find the street in Madrid with tons of shopping, but it ended up being off the map we had so we just followed our gut feeling and eventually found it… which completed our loop around the entire downtown area that we had started in the morning. So much walking and I don’t think my feet have ever hurt so badly. But we made it back to the hostel and it felt amazing to just lay down for a bit before we got dinner at this Mexican joint down the street. I was so exhausted and just immediately crashed at the hostel after dinner.
Our last day in Madrid was actually only the morning since we had to catch the 1pm bus back to Sevilla. We packed our stuff and left it at the hostel and walked to the Rastro, the famous marketplace that has hundreds of vendors every Sunday. We literally left everything at the hostel, since the Rastro is pick-pocketing central and I did not want to risk getting anything taken. People were selling things from dresses and belts to screwdrivers and pans and everything in between. In one of the stores on one of the streets of the Rastro, I saw the most incredible and beautiful hookah I have ever seen and now I’m so mad at myself for not buying it or at least seeing how much it was. I’m hoping that when I go to Morocco I can find its match… too late now. We gave ourselves an hour to get to the bus, which should have been plenty, but then we realized we were going the wrong way on the loop to the stop we needed… so we had to almost go around the entire route and got off the metro with no joke 5 minutes left to get to our bus. We ran up 3 flights of stairs and then I frantically asked where the bus to Sevilla was and we just barely made it. My heart was racing and I was sweating like it was my job… the feeling of relief when we got there was unreal. Other than that little scare, it was a trip with no problems and tons of great experiences. I’m really proud of how much we saw in 2 days but, as with every place I have visited in Spain, I would love to go back and see more of the city.

More pictures in Madrid!