Tuesday we took the Metro to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace of Madrid).  Inside the Palacio, we saw the Royal Armory which was super cool and included all sorts of antique armor for men, horses, children, and even dogs!  We saw probably 30 rooms inside the palace and that couldn’t have even been ¼ the total number of rooms.  We saw major meeting rooms like the Hall of Colums (http://bit.ly/pCs37M) where Spain signed a treaty to join the European Union in 1985, the Throne Room (http://bit.ly/rmr4V2), and many personal rooms of previous kings and queens.  Every room inside the palace appeared to be decorated in a completely different, but equally ornate style.  Even the majority of the ceilings were painted with detailed frescoes.  We saw a large dining room, a king’s dressing and sitting room, a small billiards room, and a room dedicated to the Palace’s silver, china, crystal, and porcelain.  We also visited the Royal Pharmacy at the end of the tour, where the King kept a pharmacist on staff along with 3 full rooms of jars, pots, and a working alchemist’s laboratory.  You can view a portion of one of the rooms here: http://bit.ly/p7T8V3.  My guidebooks state that the Palace is still used on occasion for state functions, but that the current King/President of Spain, Juan Carlos I, and his family reside at a smaller, more modest estate on the outskirts of Madrid called La Zarzuela Palace.

In total we spent about 2.5 hours visiting the palace but unfortunately we were not able to take any personal pictures while inside, so all the photos that I’ve linked to in this post I’ve obtained via Google (and rights go to their respective owners).  There were guards, sometimes more than 1, in every room who were ready at the drop of a hat to yell “No photo!” at anyone who even looked at their camera.  We were, however, able to take pictures inside the courtyard of the Palace, and we’ve posted those pictures to the MADRID PICTURES link.

After visiting the Palacio, we went shopping on Gran Via in Madrid and it was wonderful!  We stopped at multiple souvenir shops, found a store having a major shoe and handbag sale, and also went clothes shopping.  Kat is bringing home a new winter coat, a blouse, and a new handbag.  Joe is bringing home a tshirt.  Sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles 🙂

We also stopped at the Telefónica flagship store, where Joe got to play like a kid in a candy store.  Telefónica is the number 1 telecommunications company in Spain, and one of the largest in the world.  Their flagship store layout reminded Joe a lot of an Apple store – there were tons of cell phones on display to play with, and a bunch of touch-screen tvs with games to play, sweet stairs that showed electronic pictures as you looked up them (see an example here: http://bit.ly/rrqDEb), Kinnects on display and lots more.  Joe is still itching to get a tablet, and this did nothing to take care of that.

After we shopped til we dropped – literally, we went back to the hotel and took our regular afternoon siesta – we worked on updating our blog and pictures for a few hours.  We then decided to go out around 10p to a café recommended to Kat by a friend, La Tia Cebolla.  We sat outside on the terrace and drank a few beers, ate some seafood paella (Kat loved it, Joe didn’t), and shared a pitcher of Sangria.  After La Tia Cebolla, we walked around for a bit before deciding to head to one more bar called The Dubliner – which turned out to be a very American bar!  They were playing all current American music, served us Corona’s with chicken fingers, and played ESPN America on the big screen.  We met a girl and her family from Long Island, NY who will be studying in Madrid for a semester and she was very nice.  The Dubliner was a lot of fun, and a nice slice of home.  We made it back to our hotel around 2a, long before the crowds of people on the streets and restaurants were heading home, and fell asleep almost immediately.

On Wednesday we headed out to the Museo del Prado and stopped at a local café for a lunch of sandwiches and coffee.  We arrived at the Prado around 2:30p and purchased our entrance tickets.  The Museo del Prado houses an amazing collection of art, which includes mostly paintings and a few sculptures.  We spent approximately 3.5 hours at the museum and saw such famous paintings as “Adam & Eve” by Dürer (http://bit.ly/o1n4yA), “The Garden of Delights” by Bosch (http://bit.ly/1QHkkf), and “The Adoration of the Shephards” by El Greco (http://bit.ly/oSpiJu), along with countless others.  The most amazing part of our trip to the Prado is that in 3.5 hours we still didn’t see everything that the museum has to offer!  Unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures or videos inside the Prado either, so all images (again) came from Google and rights go to their respective owners.

After leaving the Prado, we walked back to our hotel to coordinate our pickup from the airport tomorrow night, and then walked to a pizza restaurant nearby our hotel.  We split a pizza with ham, cheese, red bell peppers and tuna on it.  Turns out that tuna on pizza is gross – we would not recommend that.  Afterwards we came back to the hotel and began the awful task of packing our suitcases again.  Flying between Spain and the Canary Islands we learned that Europe has no problems or rules regarding liquids in your carry-on, so we have to be extra careful now when packing to make sure that we’re following all the TSA guidelines.  Hopefully we can get everything home in one piece, under the weight limits, and without having to throw anything away at the security gate!

Our flight leaves tomorrow at 12:35p Madrid time, and our layover in Philly is at 3:15p tomorrow (Philly cheesesteak here we come!) before arriving in Minneapolis at 8:30p CST, which would be around 3:30a in Madrid – yikes!  Wish us safe travels, we’re excited to come home!

After El Rastro, we took the Metro to the Parque del Retiro and stopped by an outdoor café to split a sandwich for lunch.  The sandwich was “Spanish omelette”, which was essentially an egg/potato/onion mix with ham, and Joe enjoyed it (Kat didn’t like it quite so much).  We walked around the park for a while, sat on a bench to do some more people-watching, and listened to the various music players in the park – particularly a bad saxophone player that was pretty funny.   We saw the boating pond inside the park, and watched the fish for a while (they were ugly fish), and also visited the Crystal Palace.  The Crystal Palace, according to my guidebook, was inspired by its British namesake in 1887.  It’s a pretty glass and iron structure with a pond and fountain in front.  After enjoying the beautiful day at the park, we walked back to our hotel, where we took a siesta before going out to dinner around 10:30p.  We ate dinner at Gino’s, a chain Italian restaurant, which is close to our hotel.  Joe had a margherita pizza and Kat had ravioli with shrimp – both were very good.

On Monday we woke up late, around 11:30, and ate sandwiches for lunch while lazing around our hotel for a while.  We walked down to the Museo del Prado and stopped for coffee on our way.  When we arrived at the Prado, we realized that it is closed on Mondays so we changed plans and headed to the Museo Reina Sofia instead, which is only a few blocks away.  The Reina Sofia is a modern art museum that was incredibly interesting, but it can be hard to appreciate modern art when you don’t understand it.  We spent most of our time looking at the 3 dimensional works, though we did stop to see some Salvador Dalí paintings, and of course Picasso’s most famous work inside the Reina Sofia: Guernica.  Pictures were not allowed of Guernica, but you can see the work here: http://bit.ly/ud8r.  Some of our favorite exhibits in the museum included works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (temporary exhibit), the Dalí paintings, and two works by Lygia Pape: “Magnetic Space” and “Book of Time”.

After leaving the museum, we stopped by the hotel to grab our laptop and then went to the Plaza Mayor where we worked on our pictures that we’ve uploaded to the link on the right.  The Plaza Mayor is a great place for people-watching, and is basically a large square with grand statues and archways surrounding the many terrace restaurants.  We saw several street performers, like a really fat Spider-Man, Minnie Mouse, and an artist drawing tourist portraits while working on our photos.  We went back to the hotel around 7p and uploaded several of our pictures and videos, but we were bored by 11:30p, so we decided to head to VIPS for a little late night snack: crispy chicken caesar salad and some croquettas – a great way to end the night!

We woke up around 11p and decided to find some food close by our hotel, on Gran Via.  The McDonalds was pretty busy for that time of night, but it was also a Friday.  We called it a night shortly after eating, and decided to get a fresh start the next morning.

Saturday morning we slept in (this is turning out to be normal for every day of the week) and woke up around 11am.  We stopped by a convenience store to purchase some sandwiches for lunch, and then decided to purchase tickets for a hop on / hop off tourist bus.  The tickets were cheaper in Madrid than they had been in Barcelona, but it was the same setup.  The bus provides you with headphones that you plug into the seat in front of you, you select your language, and then you listen to the tour of the city as you drive by.  The bus had both a “Historic” route and a “Modern” route, so we made sure to catch both trips.  We saw a ton of beautiful and interesting sites, such as the Museo del Prado, Gran Via (what used to be a major thoroughfare in Madrid), the Plaza de España, the Templo de Debod, the Palacio Real (Royal Palace of Madrid), the Plaza Mayor, the Puerta del Sol, the Museo Thyssen, the Museo Reina Sofia (modern art museum), the first Post Office, the Naval Museum, Santiago Bernabeu (stadium for Real Madrid), and the US Embassy.

At the Templo de Debod, we stopped to get out and walk around.  It was a very pretty park with views over the city of Madrid, and contained a temple that was a gift to Spain from Egypt.  We were not able to go inside the temple because it was on siesta, but the park was still beautiful.  We took a video of the park and will post it to our pictures section.

After riding both the Historic and the Modern routes on the tourist bus, we came back to our hotel and took a short siesta before heading out for dinner.  We found a diner-type chain restaurant by our hotel named VIPS and decided to eat there. We ordered croquettas for an appetizer and Joe had a “Brooklyn” wrap, which consisted of toasted white bread wrapped around ham and cheese served with honey mustard sauce and french fries – it was really good.  Kat ordered the barbeque chicken flatbread, which was pretty good, but the croquettas were awesome (so was the sangria)!  We headed back to the hotel that night around 10:30p and lounged around before falling asleep.