Madrid

That's where I went together with Mariana last weekend. We arrived Friday afternoon and went more or less straight to Museo de Reina Sofia - an arts museum with lots of Picasso and Dalí, and some García Lorca. We didn't have time to see half of it, since we were cheap enough to go in the last two hours of the opening hours, when the entrance is free.

Madrid was freakin' cold on Saturday morning, and I refused to do any serious sightseeing before buying a winter coat. So I bought two, plus plus, and we started touristing down Calle del Arenal towards Palacio Real where we took the necessary photos, Brazilian style, before heading towards Museo de Prado.
Being as cheap as ever, we also went there in the two last opening hours - free entrance! And so did all the other tourists.

Luckily a museum lady told us about an entrance on the other side with almost no people. Same thing she told nearly half of all the turists... Well inside, we aimed for Goya - just to have a some kind of a plan. I hadn't really done any research, - what I know about Goya is what is portrayed in the movie Goya's Ghosts. All in all I preferred the art in Museo Reina Sofia which is more modern. And there I found this Dalí painting which I fell in love with.

I came to learn that, in addition to two huge arts museums, a huge palace, a huge amount of tourists and a Plaza Mayor, Madrid also offers huge beer and a huge flea marked; El Rastro, where you can get basically anything.

 (I skipped putting up one of my pictures of El Rastro. Thought this one of me drowning in one litre of beer was more charming than me drowning in an ocean of shoppers).

On Sunday we went to Toldeo, a relatively old (settled roughly 2700 years ago), and beautiful city just south of Madrid. The weather wasn't quite on our side, so to make the sightseeing more efficient, I went up in the two towers of Church of San Ildefonso or Jesuitas.

Mariana preferred to wait downstairs at the Plaza Padre Juan de Mariana, - naturally.

When we felt more or less done with Toledo, Toledo decided it wasn't done with us, and we spent 1,5 hour or so wandering in the rain with no clue of what direction the bus station was in, and too proud to ask.




Still, Toledo knew how to cheer us up and remind us that we would soon be on our way back to the right city.