Madrid

From Barcelona we headed off to Mardrid via the night train. It's cheaper, of course, to have a seat rather then a bed, so we spend a very uncomfterable 9 hours in a cabin with three other people. It was cramped, hot, and stuffy, not to mention we had both gotten sick from another backpacker in our dorm in Barcelona. So overall it was a very unpleasant experience we hope never to repeat itself again.

But, we arrived safe and sound (albeit exhausted) at the Los Amigos hostel located pretty much right in the middle of "old" Madrid. Since we had three days ahead of us, we decided to just sleep through the whole day to get a speedy recovery.

At the end we were a bit tired of seeing picture after picture of,well, Jesus.

On day two we made a visit to the Museum Del Prado. We were told not only was this the best museum in Madrid, but it also hosts one of the worlds most elite art collection. We were quite impressed with the amount of art, thats for sure. It took us a good few hours to get through it. At the end we were a bit tired of seeing picture after picture of well.. Jesus, but it was 15th-18th century art afterall. Afterwords, feeling a bit arted-out, we wandered around central Madrid for a while to get some things to eat and headed back to the hostel. For a hostel, Los Amigos is very clean and well designed, although it is more for function then fun. The place has no curfew but it's lights out/quite time at 11pm, which doesn't leave much time for socializing.

On our final day in Madrid we went to the Museum de Arte Reina Sofia. This was a change of pace from the Museums we've seen on this trip as it has a larger focus on more modern pieces. Though we forgot to mention it, we did visit the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, but the Reina Sofia Museum actually had a lot more of his more famous pieces, including the legendary Guernica. This was a piece Picasso did in protest of the German bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Most of the museum was really interesting, but the top floor had what we like to call "ultra modern art". The ones where it's just a white canvas with six black dots on it and it has some meaningful name like "judgment" or something strange. We got a kick out of it none the less.

The next day we planned our trip to La Mancha and prepared for a brief one hour bus ride into the city of Toledo.