my travels: Madrid Day 1 6th November

Our spot in the industrial estate, where we spent the night waiting for someone to knock on our door and asking us to move on.

In the morning we were awake early as we thought we should move the truck before too many people noticed our presence. We decided to try to find the campground we had spent many frustrated minutes looking for the previous night, and so tried the only unexplored route hoping for better luck. There were appropriate and helpful signs pointing out the camp-ground, possibly less than a kilometre from where we had spent the night. We booked in to a rather dark and noisy campground for 30 euro a night, settled in, made a cup of tea, prepared some food to take with us, and then went to catch the bus which left from about 200m away and took us straight to the Madrid city area. The last stop on the line was a couple of kms walk uphill to the first art gallery we planned on visiting. As it was Sunday and therefore many museums had free entrance we planned an art gallery crawl.

Waiting for the bus

Interesting building viewed from the bus

Art Gellery we couldn't find again when we wanted to

A Picasso

View from the glass lift of the Reina Sofia Museum

We started with the Museo Reina Sofia which had many Miro, Dali, Picasso and other Spanish works, I quite enjoyed it, it was reasonably calm and easy going work, though I tend to prefer the more recent impressionists and things which are light and simple, and i can tell what they are trying to depict. We spent an hour and a half or so here before heading a bit further up the hill to the Prado museo. We started with the Museo Reina Sofia which had many Miro, Dali, Picasso and other Spanish works, I quite enjoyed it, it was reasonably calm and easy going work, though I tend to prefer the more recent impressionists and things which are light and simple, and i can tell what they are trying to depict. We spent an hour and a half or so here before heading a bit further up the hill to the Prado museo.

The front of the Prado Museum

This was full of Reubens, Goya, El Greco and Valazquez s, many of which were dark and nasty like Saturn eating his son ans of other very dark and unfriendly depictions of murderous acts. After we had our fill we went for a walk up to Sol Plaza to see some sights, in particular we fancied seeing the Madrid bear and strawberry tree statue which we found easily. just building watched and then walked back as the sun went down casting pretty light over the city.