Time for an adventure!: Don't hold your breath in the Madrid tunnels!

During the week and a half break from school our group went on a five day trip to Madrid and some of the surrounding areas. We arrived in Madrid after a five hour bus ride from Granada and the first thing we did was head to the Museo Reina Sofia, and art museum in the center of the city. Now, I can appreciate art with the best of them, but we spent three hours in this museum, and it was completely filled with modern art, which is NOT my thing. It was a very long three hours! We did get to see some famous pieces such as Picasso's Guernica and other work by Spanish artists like Goya. However, I was more than ready to leave when the time came! =) We headed to our hotel, called Hotel Alexandra (which was a little worn but totally sufficient... the "art" on our wall was a framed puzzle of King Tut!), and then to dinner at this great restaurant nearby called El Pajar. Boy did we have a good time there! We were sitting at the only table for six and we were having a fantastic time and being quite a bit more boisterous than the rest of our group, and our waiter absolutely LOVED us! Every time he would walk by to go to another table he would make faces at us, which just sent us all into another fit of giggles. At the end of the meal (which was ENORMOUS but delicious) we even got a picture with the waiter to commemorate the night. We definitely had the most fun out of anyone in our group at that meal!

Tuesday we went on a historic walking tour of central Madrid with a very entertaining guide named Eduardo. We got to see a real Egyptian Temple right in the middle of Madrid (it was moved there from Egypt stone by stone in the 70s as a thank you from the Egyptian government... apparently the US has one too!), the Royal Palace, the Cathedral, the Plaza Mayor, and Puerta del Sol, which is where the Spaniards celebrate New Years (kind of an equivalent of Times Square). After lunch at the same restaurant as the night before (we had the same waiter, and this time he gave us each a pen as a present and told us to write him! We are going to send him the picture we took with him... how fun!) and then headed to Museo del Prado, one of the most famous art museums in Spain. I liked this one better because it was stuff that I actually considered art! There were tons of portraits of European royalty from centuries ago and a LOT of religious art. However, I have to say after three more hours of art I kind of never wanted to see a painting again in my life! I think I will just stick to the performing arts and call it good! =)

After the Prado we had a free afternoon and evening and the three girls I hung out with all week and I decided to go check out the Archeological Museum and the National Library, which were both incredible! I'm such a history nerd that I absolutely loved learning more about the history of Spain and all the different people who have lived and ruled here throughout the centuries. After walking with some other people in our group to go see the "oldest restaurant in the world" (or so it boasted), we went back to the hotel to just hang out. We had been walking for more than TEN HOURS that day... we were pooped!

Another crazy thing about Madrid is that there are tunnels for the cars all over the place. When we were driving into the city we were in a tunnel and some of the girls were trying to hold their breath until the end, but we were in there for what seemed like forever! So don't try to hold your breath in the Madrid tunnels! =)