Day 5? Already!

So I've been remiss about keeping up, but it's only because I've been so incredibly tired! I'm going to do my best to recollect the adventures that have occurred over the past two...now three-ish days.


If today is Wednesday then I'll go back to... Monday.  Ok so if I remember correctly on Monday we went to the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art. Modern art is in a word, weird.  The entire purpose of going to that museum is to see the Guernica, which is probably Picasso's greatest work.  It's supposed to represent the devastation felt by the small Spanish town the painting is named for, after Hitler used their town for target practice essentially.   Personally however, I think Picasso and some other artists of his time, Miró and Dali (melting clocks dude) were all doing some sweet drugs.  The building is supposed to be all modern and such, which means all the walls are white and
there is 1 painting every 20 feet, and one bench to sit on every 100 feet.  But I suppose one must try and have some sort of appreciation for paintings that are.. different.  After that we went to the Caixa Forum for lunch.  The food, once again, was delicious.  We've been eating like Spaniards too.  Light breakfast, big lunch, light supper.  The Caixa Forum is also a museum too, it has different photography exhibits on display. It's free, but we didn't stroll around that one since we were all museumed out for the day. We walked to Puerta de Atocha, the train station, after lunch to see the memorial to those who lost their lives in the Madrid train bombings in 2004. It's basically a giant indoor forest thing with a million and a half (possibly slightly exaggerated) turtles swimming around the water. But it's kind of cool.  We also bought our train tickets to Toeldo.  That afternoon Carolyn and I were kind of tuckered out so we chilled at the apartment whilst our parents wandered around some more. I honestly can't remember if we ate dinner or not that night. I don't think we went out.  I'm pretty sure we had sandwiches.  Our parents went out to a vinoteca and Carolyn and I went and got some gelato (gelaterías are EVERYWHERE around here).  While Carolyn and I were walking back to the apartment we saw our parents chilling in the window of the vinoteca so we waved at them like loons until they saw us and invited us in.  We had a glass of wine with them and some how I ended up paying the tab. hmmm. The credit card machine is broken you say..? In any case, I did enjoy the wine.

Yesterday we went to Toledo. Toledo is a medieval village will a wall surrounding it.  We took the high speed AVE train from Madrid.  Its only a 30 minute ride. Rick Steves (aka my parents Spain Bible) said the "hike" from the train station was only 20 minutes so the padres decided we could walk.  Well Rick should've said "best to get a burro because the entire trip is uphill." He also should've mentioned, "All of Toledo is a hill. You may think you are finally done climbing the mountainous streets, but you are wrong my friend, you are very wrong." So in Toledo besides becoming more sympathetic to pack mules, we saw a few "must see" sights.  The first was a museum, Museo de Santa Cruz, which housed a number of El Greco paintings and a ton of 13th century tapestries (or big rugs as Carolyn called them).  It also had an ancient Spanish pottery exhibit. The second was the cathedral.  We bought audio tours of the cathedral in order to learn more about its history. Its massive, and gorgeous.  I snuck a few pictures in before I knew you wern't supposed to take pictures (though I don't understand why. If the building has been around since the 13th century, it's certainly not going to crumble after a few photo flashes.)  We went to the cathedral the last time we were in Spain, but it's worth going to again.  After a minor breakdown in the street (I was dying of hunger/thirst/legs falling off and Patty continued to march around) we went to another church, of Santo Tomé where we saw El Greco's most famous work, El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz (the Burial of the Count of Orgaz) is exhibited.  Greco put his image in this painting he liked it so much.  The painting is literally right when you walk into the church in the hallway basically, but the church itself is also very pretty and it gave me a moment to relax.  There is a reason why we have the expression "Holy Toledo."  Toledo, being all in all probably less than 10 square miles, has 79 churches and one cathedral.  We finally ate lunch after that in a play Rick Steves recommended. Rick was wrong, this place wasn't too fabby.  But it was food nontheless.  After that we tried to go see the mosque (Toledo was home to the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jews before the Inquisition) but it was under construction.  Being tired at that point we decided to take a ride on the cheesy tourist train that goes around Toledo.  It was actually cool though because it allowed us to see the entirety of Toledo that we definitely would not have seen walking around.  Toledo is known for a couple of things, one of them is marzipan (go figure) so we bought some of that to try.  Also all the convents have little bakeries attached to them and you can go up to this itty bitty window and a nun will appear and you can by some sweets from her.  Those nuns sure can bake, because whatever we bought was delicious.  After allll that hiking around we were done, so we trucked it back to the train station and came home and went to bed.

After sleeping like 13 hours we finally awoke today.  God did we need that sleep. Every muscle in my body is killing me because of the Toledo hike.  We chillaxed all morning and early afternoon today.  We decided that since the Prado is always free from 18:00 - 20:00 we'd go back and see more. We saw one more section today. We'll probably go back and see more since there's so much.  After that we walked around El Parque de Buen Retiro.  It's a beautiful park located behind the Prado.  I took a bunch of pictures and then my camera/computer decided to be stupid and loose them while I was trying to download them.  I'll just have to go back and take more.  I finally saw a lot of people running in the park! I was really nervous about running around the streets of Madrid and looking like a fool since, well people here don't run in the streets.  They do run in the park though! And it's super close to school, so I think I know what I'll be doing after classes end :) For dinner tonight we had a jillion tapas in this restaurant in La Plaza de Santa Ana, called Naturbier.  They brew their own beer, and its like all natural. No chemicals, preservatives, colorants etc. Dad wanted to try it so we said hey what the heck. Once again awesome food. Calamari, croquettes, etc. And dad liked the beer, so everyone wins. Mom ended up talking for like half an hour with the girls at the table next to us who were, of course, from Mass.  How does Patty do it? Anyhow, they were grateful for the advice and the quick Spanish lesson.

Now I think I've finally caught up.  Hope you made it through all of this!

Besos y abrazos.