After our crazy last night in Barcelona we took an 8am train from Barcelona to Madrid. Surprisingly enough, everything in Barcelona from the night before appeared to be cleaned up and all of the public transportation was once again running normally. I was a big fan of the train ride to Madrid. It was a high-speed train that was very nice, Clara and I had seats next to each other and set around a table with two other seats. After the train left Barcelona, we went to the restaurant car almost immediately because we were so hungry. We brought our croissants and coffee back to our seats and ate while we read and looked out the window. It was a very pretty train ride, we passed through mostly rolling farmland but also through some small canyons and desert-like landscape. And after only about 3 hours we had arrived in Madrid. It was such a fast, easy and comfortable way to travel.
The walk to the Prado was gorgeous. We decided that Madrid was very similar to Paris because it has many wide boulevards and very ornate buildings. It seemed like every other building was some sort of government building and all of them were a similar shade of white with heavy ornamentation. I was used to seeing buildings somewhat similar to them in Barcelona, but was not ready for the sheer number of these buildings. We also walked by a few traffic circles with incredible fountains in the middle. After some walking, we made it to the Prado. I expected the outside of the Prado to be nicer looking but was happy to see a small park around the front entrance filled with people lying in the sun and street performers playing music.
Inside, the Prado blew me away. I couldn’t believe the amount of paintings in the museum and was disappointed that we couldn’t spend all day there (guess I’ll have to go back!). We had a map of the museum and used it to see as many of the masterpieces as we could. I loved seeing the paintings of Velasquez, El Greco, Goya. We spent a couple hours wandering around looking at the artwork. I really loved seeing Goya’s 1st and 3rd of March paintings as well as some of his Black paintings. We were very hungry when we left the museum and decided to find a café to have some lunch. We ended up wandering into the El Retiro gardens, a huge garden in the middle of Madrid. There was a very large pond in the middle of the garden where people could rent rowboats and there was a big fountain on one side of it. At that point, I was pretty hungry and would have loved to grab lunch and spend the rest of the day lying in the sun in this park! We found an exit from the park and had lunch at a small café along Independence Circle. After lunch we walked down Calle Alcala past some more of the ornate buildings.
The Palace was just a few blocks away and was amazing to see. It reminded me a little bit of Buckingham Palace, although it wasn’t as well kept. There was a big square in front of the palace and, directly across from the palace, was a large, beautiful church. The two buildings and the square between them made for a beautiful, open space. We took some pictures there, sat for a few minutes on the church steps and then headed out to get a cup of coffee at a café (we were totally wiped out at this point!). After having coffee, we headed back to the hotel to get ready to go to dinner.
For dinner that night, we met up with my dad’s friend Antoine and his wife Elena. My dad worked with Antoine in Amsterdam and they hadn’t seen each other in 18 years. We met at a restaurant called Tartan, which was apparently one of the hottest restaurants in Madrid. The whole place had a plaid theme (hence the name Tartan!) and the meal was easily the best I’ve had in awhile. Elena was from Madrid so she ordered all of us some amazing tapas to share while we drank wine and my parents caught up with her and Antoine. Dinner and dessert was amazing as well, I understand why you have to call weeks in advance to get a table at that restaurant! We had a lot of fun that night meeting/catching up with Antoine and Elena and got back pretty late!
After the cathedral, we walked down the street to a smaller church that contained a painting by El Greco. El Greco focused many of his paintings on Toledo, so it was great to see on in its original church. After visiting that small church, we went to one of the synagogues in the city. The synagogue was my favorite building we saw in Toledo. I may have the order a little bit wrong, but I think the synagogue was built originally as a synagogue but over the years had been turned into a mosque and then turned into a church. I loved that the synagogue showed all three of Toledo’s religious influences in on building. It was beautiful!
We then left the sculptor’s house and went to a monastery and it’s adjoining church. The monastery had a gorgeous courtyard and was very ornately decorated. The church adjoined to it was equally as impressive and it was great to be able to take pictures in each of them. We then left the church and headed back out the city gates and towards the bus. It was a very fast trip to Toledo, but I’m so glad we went. The different religious influences were very interesting to see and the town was very pretty. We were exhausted by the time we got back on the bus and slept most of the way back to Madrid.
When we got back to Madrid, we were starving and set out to find some lunch. We had some salad and tapas at a café and then decided to walk down into the Latin district since we didn’t get there on Friday and Saturday afternoon was our last in Madrid. It was a nice walk down, although none of us loved the neighborhood. It was not like the rest of Madrid and we soon decided we wanted to get back to the big streets and ornate buildings. We walked back up toward our hotel and did some shopping on Gran Via. After shopping, it was getting late in the afternoon so we decided to head back to the hotel to pack before going to dinner.
to see more pictures from this trip go to: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151486440835481.834572.588220480&type=3&l=60ebf55ae0
No comments:
Post a Comment