Downtown Madrid
A church in Madrid located near the famous Prado Museum. I don’t know the name of the church.
On Sunday, Nenad, Dima and I ventured out from the comfort and safety of the residence building to go to Madrid. The goal was to take a look at the Prado Museum we had heard so much about and if time permitted, wander around the city a bit. Of course, like most days, it was a slow start and we didn’t leave until after 17:00. After spending around 40 minutes on the subway, we emerged into the heart of Madrid.
It was here at the metro station where we ran into a tourist from London who was trying to find the museum as well so she joined us for the short walk from the station to the entrance of the museum. She must have been on a much more hurried time table than we were because she made her way through the museum much quicker than we did. Apparently Nenad is a bit of an art buff and so we spent a great deal of time going through the museum – it’s a big place. We didn’t finish in the 2 hours we were there. But I did get about one hundred photos of paintings or Nenad standing by paintings. At some point in the future we will have to go back and view the other floor we didn’t see.
After the museum we emerged onto the streets of Madrid at about 20:00 and still had a bit of time before we had to head back if we wanted to catch dinner. So we went to Parque de Resito which is quite large (1.4 km2) and enjoyed the sunset there for a while. While there, we came across and event which I think is best described as a hippy rave. If any of you are familiar with the second Matrix movie and that scene in Zion with the dancing, then it was something like that, but on a smaller scale. At this point it was getting late so we started heading back to the subway station.
However, at this point, the subway was pretty busy – not the station we entered, but the next train that arrived was. It was full – too full. But the three of us crammed in anyway. Long story short, when I got off the train, I noticed that I was a bit lighter, or more to the point my cellphone was missing from my pocket. Also missing was my brochure from the museum, but that isn’t as important. Fortunately, my wallet and passport were safely tucked away because I was expecting pickpockets, but I neglected to consider my cellphone because I use it so rarely that I don’t even realize that I have it. I blame most of this on the crappy small front pockets that my shorts have and also clearly on pure carelessness on my part. Fortunately, the thieves didn’t get much, my phone was many years old and the battery wasn’t great and it had a broken face plate – unfortunately the phone wasn’t really mine. Val and Terry, I don’t think I’ll be able to return that Nokia. :/
Despite ending on a bit of a low note, the evening was very nice.