Weekend in Madrid

After Valencia, we headed to Madrid via Ryan Air. That was my first Ryan Air experience, and needless to say it wasn't too pleasant. But hey--it's cheaper. Madrid was very cool--for being such a huge city, it's still clean and pretty. It's a lot more tourist friendly--everyone speaks English and for once, I wasn't the only blonde on the street. But I think I like living in Pamplona a lot better, because we definitely have to speak a lot more Spanish.

Anyways, we went to the Palacio Real, where the King and Queen of Spain live. It reminded me a bit of Versailles, minus the gardens and the gold everywhere. We're also thinking that this is where Lindsay got pickpocketed while standing in line....

After the Palacio Real, we walked to El Parque de Buen Retiro, a 300 acre park which is basically the Central Park of Spain. It was definitely the place to be on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon--everyone was sunbathing, rollerblading, or taking paddleboats out on the lake.

Our last stop of the day before dinner was the Reina Sofia, which was a really cool place to see. It doesn't feature many of the older works, like the Prado, but instead has Goya, Miró, Dalí and Picasso. Picasso's Guernica is there, which was cool--but even cooler, the museum had created a room of all his studies/thought processes leading up to the painting of the Guernica, so we really got to understand all the complexities that went into its creation.

Finally, we got a taste of home when we walked into an Irish pub, and lo and behold, the scores for the Mizzou/Cornell game were up. We saw the last two minutes of the game as Mizzou went on to victory. Perfect.