First Impressions of Madrid

We arrived in Madrid, Spain on the morning of July 16^th after a 10 hour overnight train ride from Lisbon, Portugal. Chad had booked us an apartment right downtown Madrid for our 3 nights here, so we took a cab from the train station. Unfortunately the cab driver had no idea where this place was and we ended up waiting on the side of the street for about 15 minutes while he ran up to every passing taxi asking other taxi drivers how to get there.
When we arrived with all our luggage we found no reception, just an apartment building. So we called our reservation phone number and they told us they would meet us at the apartment no earlier than 1pm (and it was 10am when we arrived). So we spent a few hours at a local bar/café while we waited.
At 1pm we were let into the most amazing apartment. This apartment had a full kitchen (dishes, toaster, coffee maker, kettle, fridge, dish washing machine, laundry machine, oven, microwave, etc), a TV/living room with a television and DVD player, a pullout couch and dining room table, and we also had a bedroom and bathroom!! And on top of everything… FREE WIRELESS INTERNET!! Amazing!!


The first thing we did was laundry!! I have been traveling for over 3 weeks, washing my clothing in hotel/hostel sinks and bathtubs and the idea of using a real washing machine was so exciting!!
After getting settled in the apartment we went for a walk in the surrounding areas. We are situated right downtown, a few blocks south of the Gran Via Street, about a block west of the Prado Museum.
The next day we started our real touring with the Prado Museum, an art museum with the world’s greatest collection of 12^th-19^th century Spanish paintings as well as numerous foreign collections of artwork.
The front entrance of the Prado Museum with a statue of the famous Spanish painter Velazquez:

It took us most of the day to view only the permanent collections of this incredible museum. The most famous Spanish painters housed in this museum were Velazquez, El Greco and Goya. My personal favourite was Velazquez. I found that his paintings were so realistic. Goya, on the other hand, had a very diverse repertoire of painting styles. For the most part I liked his paintings, but I was not a huge fan of his “Black Paintings”, painted in the early 1800s which were a set of very dark and sinister paintings, portraying distorted humans. They were a reflection of his view of mankind and the conditions of the world.
After the Prado Museum we took a tour bus around the city to see and hear important information about the main sights in Madrid.
Madrid is such a beautiful city, but it’s different from Lisbon. I found Madrid to be a lot easier to tour as the streets are easier to maneuver and the main sights are easy to spot. One downside is that there are so many interesting and amazing things to do in Madrid that 3 days is no where near enough time to see them all!
Here are a few of the sights we saw from the tour bus:




We then went to the Palacio Real, but unfortunately it was too late for us to enter. Instead we walked around outside.


The Catedral de la Almudena, right next to the Palacio Real:

After a long day of touring we called it quits and went back to our apartment.