MADRID!

For the weekend of September 19th our program (GSE) took us all to Madrid. It was a LONG 8 hour bus ride from Barcelona to Madrid, but luckily most of us slept a majority of the way. This is Heidi and I on the bus almost finally there.

The first place we stopped was Plaza Mayor, please observe the tubby spidey wandering around the plaza.

Of course we needed to get a picture with the legend.

Next stop on the tour was Museo del Prado. We saw alot of really famous paintings and learned alot, but by that time we were all so exhausted we didnt get to appreciate it.

That night we went out in Madrid for Heidi's 20th. Unfortunately the night life didnt compare to Barcelona!

The next morning we got up at the crack of dawn to go to the Valley of the Fallen just outside of Madrid where the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco himself laid.

Its hard to grasp the size in the pictures but that is the largest cross in the world!

From there we went to El Escorial which was a residence for the king of Spain and also a monastery. It was incredibly huge and housed some beautiful art and architecture. We werent supposed to take our cameras in but i snuck a few.

The beautiful gardens at El Escorial

I snuck this photo inside the church it was amazing!

That night was a huge festival in all the streets of Madrid called Noche en Blanco. There were concerts everywhere and all of the famous sights and museums were open until LATE. We decided to go to the Palace because we heard it was quite the sight. We were the last people to be let in at 3 am!

Unfortunately we were only given a tour of the kitchen. Which would have been great if there wasnt tons of freshly dead carcasses hanging and smelling everywhere! BUT I did find a little piece of home in all of these cake pans!

We then had to walk around for a good 2 hours just to find a cab home because we thought the metro was running all night. Apparently it closed at 330, but we got a good tour of the city on foot that night.

All in all i have to say Madrid has a lot of history to offer, but I still like Barcelona a lot more!