Stay classy, Madrid...

Hello everyone. As you have seen in the previous post, we had a wonderful time in Spain and Germany. Meredith covered most of the pictures, but I'm gonna show you stuff from Madrid.

We got into Madrid in the early evening, so just grabbed some food at a Donair shop and chilled. The donair was outstanding by the way. The next day we set out to see the sights. Basically we walked from our hostel to a main street which has all the art galleries, government buildings, and other cultural things.





The first thing we saw was this:
It's the main train station, and is one of the older ones in Spain. Very pretty.








Across the street from that was a large art installation strewn about in a courtyard.



















Basically, the artist shaped copper to make these huge faces, lips, and a big old butt. haha.








Actually, the one-wing part kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy 7 (yes, I am a total video game geek).











Our main destination was near these works, the Prado Museum. The Prado houses a lot of Goya paintings, and is almost entirely made up of religious art. I had to laugh because at first these paintings reminded me of the first thing you see when you go into a Jehovah's witness house. They were however quite beautiful. The thing that got me was that while these were painted over 150 years ago, the colours were just so vivid and alive. Meredith and I know virtually nothing about art and in fact laugh at the pretension surrounding it(i.e. 'this one is a representation of the female body in the post-colonial mosaic'...blah blah blah) but I have to say it was very powerful stuff. Naturally, I didn't take any pictures there because I wasn't sure how to turn off my flash (I know, I know) and I didn't want to be that guy who makes security come over. Anyway, here is a link to its website.

http://www.museodelprado.es/index.php?id=50

When looking at the pictures, bear in mind that most of these are MASSIVE.



So, after the Prado we walked up the street because I found a library on the map. Since I had seen a grand total of zero libraries in all our traveling, I thought I should get on that. Unfortunately, this was the National Library. As you can see, it is an absolutely beautiful building but all we were allowed to see was the lobby. It has a closed collection, and you can only go in if you have permission or are doing some kind of research.



After that we basically went back to the area around our hostel and just kicked back. As for that night, Meredith has already told you about that. Madrid was a pretty nice city. I liked it better than Barcelona, but to be honest Spain really didn't do it for me. Personally, nothing beats Berlin. That city has it all; nightlife, cheap food and beer, nice people, history and culture.

So, it looks like we'll be taking one more trip before we go home. At the beginning of May, Kent, Karen, and Jennifer (one of Meredith's extended families) are visiting and we're going to France. Our tentative plan is to go to Le Havre and Dieppe. I'm looking forward to seeing those places, as they are the sites of some major events in Canadian history. Stay tuned.