Bienvenidos al Madrid

My family seems to hit the ground running when we travel.  Because of all the college touring, we only have a week of my spring break left; so we're essentially doing a city tour.  Midday Sunday we touched down in Madrid, dropped off our bags, and went to El Rastro and La Latina.  El Rastro was not wholely memorable, but La Latina was actually very cool. We found a super cool little place for lunch and a delicious ice cream/bar/coffee place.  We also walked through La Plaza Mayor which is sort of a must see for Madrid, but not entirely special.  It is painted a very democratic shade of burgundy (literally, the city of Madrid put the color of the plaza up to vote and the people of the city chose burgundy) and chock full of street performers.  There, we also picked up the 5-day MadridCard.  For 120 euros, you can get into essentially all of the major sites and a bunch of random minor ones for free for (in our case) five days from the moment you activate it.  Also, you don't have to wait on line.  It is so worth it.

We found out just how worth it on Monday morning when we went to El Palacio Real.  I'm sure it sucks if you don't have the Card, but - when you do - it's hilarious to see how long the line gets.  The Royal Palace in Madrid is probably one of the most worthwhile palace tours, even though the audio guide is a little less than informative.  It does a great job of describing the symbolism and history of the celling frescoes and clocks (the spanish monarchy really likes clocks) but not such a great job of telling you where to look.  It's still pretty interesting though.  It's also a working palace; Juan Carlos I does live there on occasion and the Spanish military still parades through the main courtyard when military celebration is required. For awesome views of said courtyard, head across the street to La Catedral de la Santa María la Real de la Almudena and up to the dome.  It's between 2-4 euros per person (or free with the MadridCard) and there's a museum of Catholic-y stuff along the way which really helps when you're climbing stairs.  The view from the top is pretty worth the stairs as are the incredibly well armed statues of saints (Saint Timothy, for example has a massive saw).  We also hopped a subway to El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.  We essentially only got to see the second floor because we had to catch a flight to Granada, but that second floor was totally worth it.  The second floor is the Cubism/Surrealism floor and also home to La Guernica, which is super cool to see in person.  It's like 30 ft long and has it's own room.  We plan to head back to see floors 1, 3, and 4 because we're a big fan of art museums and because it's free.

As far as plans go for the rest of the week, we basically have none.  Tuesday will be Granada, but other than that we'll be hitting the Top 10 according to the Top 10: Madrid and whatever's free.)