Despite the rainy and overcast weather, we had a super day here in Madrid. We started off with a bus tour of the city then a tour of the Royal Palace. It was built in 1683-1746 by King Phillip V. The king wanted to make it like Versailles as he was born in France. It is a beautiful building with amazing art work and antiques. Our local guide Marte made the tour informative and interesting.
From there we had 2 hours on our own to shop and get lunch. Lunch takes a long time in Spain.
Next we went to the Prado museum which is Spain's classic art museum. It is one of the finest art museums in all of Europe. We focused primarily on 3 famous Spainish artists - ElGreco, Valazquez and Goya. The collections were superb and again our experience was enhanced by the local guide.
We spent the rest of the evening walking around the Sol area where there is shopping and wonderful food markets. Quincy market on steroids. Most enjoyable experience. Loads of people out and about. From there, we walked to dinner where we had a traditional Spainish dinner called Cocido. It consisted of numerous meats cooked for about 2 hours with cabbage, carrots and chick peas. It was delicious.
Notice I still haven't posted any pictures. The problem is, in addition to being on blogger.com, you also need the blogger app to be able to post pictures. However, you can't download the app outside of the USA. So the bad news is there will be no pictures until I get home. The good news for me, at least, is several of the tech savvy young teachers had the same problem so it isn't just me. I do feel sorry for them as they have a classroom of kids following their blog and are so disappointed. These young teachers are amazing. So passionate about learning and their students. Makes me feel good about our educational efforts. Also nice to be with a group of young professional women. I am probably older than their mothers but they are very inclusive of me and I think I walk faster than all of them.....
Tomorrow we are off to Toledo and eventually Granada. It will be a long day.
I'm catching up and reading several days together. Too bad about the pictures but very interesting description of what you're seeing (and eating!)in Madrid!
ReplyDelete