Madrid

Friday afternoon, we left Barcelona to go to Madrid for the weekend.  We were only there for a short time and most of the things we saw were in museums where you could not take pictures, so that means our whole Madrid experience fits into one post.  After we got off the plane in Madrid, we grabbed a quick lunch, took the subway to our hotel, checked in, and immediately went out to see the city while there was a bit of sun.

Our hotel was near Plaza Mayor, one of the main tourist areas in Madrid, so we stopped by there first.  All the restaurants on the square have tables outside for their customers to watch all the spectacles going on in the square.  There were plenty of locals trying to make a buck or two by playing various instruments or even dressing up as famous cartoon characters like Sponge Bob and Mickey Mouse.  It was something we saw often in the tourist areas in Madrid and it was kind of strange.

Plaza Mayor, all pictures in Madrid by Darren

A statue of Philip III, one of the kings of the Spanish Empire

We then walked over to the Parque del Retiro, which is a massive park that was built for the exclusive use of the Spanish monarchs.  It must be nice to have a 350-acre playground just for you.  Even though there is still a Spanish monarchy, it's now a lovely public space.

A view of downtown Madrid as we were on our way to the park

Parque del Retiro with some abstract art displays

A modern art piece inside a gazebo, seriously, plastic things stacked together is art?

Just outside of the royal park was an avenue with lots of small, outdoor book shops.  We both really loved this.

Outdoor book shops

After the park, we stopped at Starbucks to get a little snack and use the internet to read reviews online about restaurants in the area.  Before dinner though, we went to the Prado.  The museum is actually free from 6 to 8 pm on certain nights, so we went during the free hours on Friday and Saturday night.  I think it was a good idea because the Prado is so large that you could spend several hours there, and instead of getting museum fatigue (I have an art viewing limit of about 2 to 3 hours), we were able to split up the visit.  

We thought we were being so clever to go during the free hours, but apparently we weren't the only clever ones.  We arrived at the museum about five minutes early and there was already a line to get in.  So we got in line and weren't really sure what to expect.  However, the museum was well-prepared for all of these visitors and right at 6 pm, they started letting people in.  They had everyone enter through different entrances so not everyone was starting in the same place in the museum.  Therefore, even though there was a line, we easily got in within ten minutes and didn't have any trouble. This did mean that the museum was a bit crowded (and therefore a bit loud), so it's a trade-off.

The line to get into the Prado during the free hours

After the museum closed, we got dinner, which ended up being okay and finally went back to our hotel room to get some sleep.  The next morning, as forecasted, it was cold and rainy the whole day.  We had planned for this by picking all inside activities for the day.  Our first stop was the Royal Palace.  We were glad we did that first thing in the morning because the line just got longer and longer as the day went on.  We took an audio tour of some of the rooms in the royal palace and saw the royal armory.  We could not take pictures inside, even though some Chinese tourists were blatantly doing so and not getting in trouble.  I thought the tour was excellent and I really enjoyed seeing the armory.  The best thing was that some of the rooms are still used today by the current monarchy.  I can't imagine what it would be like to attend an event inside a 300-year-old palace.

The royal palace, pictures were taken the next day when it wasn't raining

Darren at the gates of the royal palace, taken the next day

Another side of the royal palace

After the royal palace, we had some lunch, and then went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.  This museum's art collection originally came from the extremely wealthy Thyssen-Bornemisza family who had housed the collection in their large villa in Lugano, Switzerland.  The collection was amassed over 60 years and includes Western works of art from hundreds of famous painters from the 14th century to the 20th century.  The collection is estimated to be worth $1 and $3 billion!  This art was just in one family's home!  In the 1980s, according to Frommers, "for tax and insurance reasons" the family had to sell the collection and several buyers came forward from Princes Charles to the President of West Germany.  However, Spain was chosen, so the country purchased the collection and it was brought to Madrid.  It really is a fantastic collection with a lot of breadth that most museums do not have.  I think many people do not know about this museum when they visit Madrid, but I would highly recommend it.

After that museum, we took another break before going back to the Prado during the free hours.  This time, even though we arrived ten minutes early, the line was even longer.  But again, the museum handled it well and we got inside in no time.  We thought the Prado was good, but it was definitely more of a Spanish national museum, rather than a worldwide museum.  The majority of their collection was Spanish and Italian art during the periods in which all people painted were royalty and religious pictures.  Therefore, I felt like there was a lot of repetition.

The next morning, on Sunday, we only had a bit of time to explore before we had to leave for the airport.  We walked back over to the Royal Palace to get some better pictures and explored other parts of Madrid.

Ran into a store that was selling a product called Amanda

Saw an Egyptian temple that was donated by Egypt to Spain, so no, it wasn't stolen

Beautiful monument we passed by

After that, we headed back to the hotel and left for home.  We had some fun in Spain and we were glad we were able to go there.

Barcelona: Part Three

Side note:  Our new camera is great, but wow, 14-megapixel-shots will eat up the free storage space on Blogger quickly!  But don't worry, I bought an extra 20 GB of space and turned down the resolution on my photos a bit, so I shouldn't have any more problems in the near future.

Anyways, on Wednesday, we had a vacation miracle: sun!  It was very windy and still chilly, but I couldn't care less because it was sunny.  Since it looked like this would be our only sunny day in Barcelona, I decided to head out to Parc Güell, which sits on a small mountain in central Barcelona, so it has great views.  This park was also designed by Gaudí and was originally meant to be part of an exclusive real estate community, but it never was completed, so the city took it over and turned it into a public park.  The park has a lot of walking paths and different things Gaudi designed.

There's a walking path on top of those pillars

Gaudí designed this church

There was at least one house in the park, though I don't know if it's occupied

Practicing my photography skills

The park had a great view of Barcelona, but I made the mistake of going to the park in the late morning/early afternoon, therefore the sun was right in my face when I tried to take pictures looking towards the water.  This meant that the pictures of downtown Barcelona are kind of washed out.

Looking towards the Mediterranean, another picture of Sagrada Familia from far away

If you look in the opposite direction from the water, there is another mountain called Tibidabo, which strangely has a large church and a small amusement park next to each other.  See the red roller coaster track on the right?

I had started at the top of the hill from the parking lot entrance of the park and worked my way down to the main entrance of the park.  The main entrance is between the two white-roofed buildings you see below.

The most popular park of the park is the open area that was meant to be the marketplace for the real estate community.  If you walk past the two buildings from above, you can reach the marketplace area by walking up these steps that are shown below.  The marketplace is above the columns.

Couldn't get good pictures here because of so many tourists

The marketplace area, which is now just for tourists and peddlers

Below the marketplace where the columns are, there are fantastic mosaics on the ceiling, like this one below.  Again, I just love Gaudí's use of mosaics and bright colors.

Great mosaics at the park

The sign on the wall just outside the entrance

After I visited the park, I headed back to the downtown area to get some lunch, to enjoy more sun, and to take pictures of the sights I saw on Monday.  While walking around, I ran into this protest/demonstration?  I have no idea what it was about.  Can anybody read Spanish/Catalan?

Everybody's protesting these days, but these people seemed really happy so maybe it was a rally?

I went by the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral again since it was open this time and did my best to take pictures inside with the low lighting.

The inside of Santa Maria del Mar cathedral

I'm proud of this picture of one of the stained-glass windows, it's so sharp, even with lots of zoom and low lighting!

I then headed over to another public park called Parc de la Ciutadel where the 1888 World's Fair was held (thank you World's Fairs and Olympics for fantastic public spaces).

Lovely fountain in the park

Did you know Spain also has an Arc de Triomf? Main entrance of the 1888 World's Fair.

After the conference was over that day, Darren met me at the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral that designed by Gaudí, but was never finished in his lifetime and is still under construction.  It costs $18 per person to go inside, which is rather expensive, but it is worth the money.  It is so fascinating inside and the cathedral is only funded through private donations and entrance fees (not clear on why neither the Catholic church nor the city of Barcelona don't contribute...).

There are a lot of design details, history, and symbolism involved with this cathedral that I don't want to delve into here.  I will just briefly point out that construction on the cathedral began in 1882, but Gaudí did not become the architect until a year later.  The church was never finished, I think, because of poor funding and several civil and world wars.  Construction began again in the 1950s and only just last year, enough of the inside was completed to add an organ and allow for services to be held there.  The cathedral was dedicated by the Pope just last November.  I will now just describe what you are seeing in the pictures below and feel free to read up more about Sagrada Familia here.

This newly constructed side of the cathedral focuses on the death of Christ

The inside of the cathedral

The "front" of the cathedral, with some great color filtering through the stained-glass

The older side of the cathedral focuses on the life of Christ

After the cathedral, we went to the Picasso Museum, which features some of his works since he spent a lot of time in Barcelona, but we thought the museum wasn't that great.  We had some mediocre food at a touristy restaurant for dinner, then headed back to our sketchy apartment to rest our tired feet and get some sleep.  

Our last full day in Barcelona and the last day of the conference was Thursday.  I didn't go out and see much because it was pouring down rain and I thought I had covered everything that looked interesting to me.  We did decide to check out the Barcelona Aquarium before dinner since it got good reviews.  Well, it wasn't as great as the reviews said, but we tried to have fun anyways.

After that, we had a great end to our Barcelona trip by eating a delicious meal at Cafe de l'Academia.  I would recommend this place to everyone!

Barcelona: Part Two

Though it was still chilly on Tuesday, it did not rain much, so I was able to take pictures.  Darren went to his conference in the morning, but he planned to skip the afternoon session since the talks didn't apply to him, so I tried to do some sightseeing near the conference center.  My intent was to go to an open-air museum built for the 1929 World's Fair that recreates a Spanish village using architectural styles from all around the country.  The museum was near the conference center on a small mountain in the city called Montjuïc.  This was not only the site of the World's Fair, but of the 1992 Summer Olympics.

I got off the subway at the conference center stop and wow, there were a lot of people there!  They weren't kidding when they said 50,00 people were attending the conference.  I didn't get a shot of the entrance because I figured Darren would, but he didn't either, so I only have pictures of the back, which you will see in this post.  The subway stop and the conference center was at the base of the mountain, so I walked up to the top of the mountain where the Museum of Catalan Art is (and where supposedly the architecture museum was) and took some pictures along the way.

The Sagrada Familia, which was miles away, brought to you by the awesome 35x zoom on our camera

Water fountains on Montjuïc

The Museum of Catalan Art

The view of the city from the steps of the museum with Sagrada Familia in the center

The shot below is of the conference center and the space around it from the steps of the museum.  The two brick towers in the back were where the entrance was and where the subway stop was.  Normally, you can walk straight through the brick towers and up some escalators past the fountain to reach the mountaintop.  Well, all of that space was taken up by the conference and it was blocked off. 

I spent the next twenty minutes trying to figure out where this architecture museum was.  All the signs were pointing to places that were blocked off by the conference, so I finally figured out that the conference must be using the museum space and I couldn't go in.  With another hour to kill before I was supposed to meet up with Darren, I just went to the Museum of Catalan Art instead.  Barcelona is the capital of the Catalonian region of Spain, which merged with the Castilian empire to create a unified Spain in the 15th century.  Catalonia has a rich history in arts and culture stretching into the 20th century, so the museum featured art starting from the 14th century all the way to the modern works of Antoni Gaudí.  

Unfortunately, not many of the descriptions in the museum were in English, but I mostly just enjoyed going at my own pace, not having to worry about speeding up or slowing down for anyone else!  It was quite lovely.  I was not able to get through the whole museum in an hour, but I saw the works I was interested in, including Gaudí and Juan Míro.  

I met Darren outside of the museum and we headed back to the city center so Darren could see some sites I had been to the day before.  We walked down La Rambla, which is a mile-long avenue filled with shops, restaurants, street performers, and generally the most touristy part of Barcelona.  It was interesting to see, but we didn't spend a lot of time there.  I'm sure it is nice during the other seasons when the trees have leaves on them.

At the end of La Rambla is a monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus.  It was the newly united Spanish empire (ruled by Ferdinand and Isabella) that funded this Italian's voyages to America.  The monument features Columbus on top supposedly pointing the way to the New World (he's actually pointing east) with sculptures around the base depicting Columbus's interactions with the king and queen of Spain (Did you know Spain celebrates Columbus Day, too?).

Monument to Columbus

Base of the monument

We walked over to the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral, which was built in the 14th century to commemorate the conquest of Sardinia by King Jaume II.  It was closed at the time, but I took pictures of the inside the next day, which I will show in the next post.

Santa Maria del Mar

First "people" picture!

We came across this funny store by the cathedral called Happy Pills.  Can you figure out what they are selling?

They are selling candy!

 After a short break back at our apartment, we then walked some more to see some Gaudí architecture.  Antoni Gaudí was a Catalan architect from the turn of the century who designed several famous locations in Barcelona.  I really didn't know much about him and didn't understand the all the hype surrounding him, but I really enjoyed the first house we went to designed by Gaudí called Casa Batlló.  We couldn't go inside because it was closed every afternoon for private events that week (probably for the conference), but it was still interesting to see from the outside.  I really like his use of mosaics and lots of color here.

Casa Batlló

We then walked a couple of blocks to see another Gaudí building called La Pedrera or Casa Milá, but I did not enjoy this one as much.

Finally, we went to the Barcelona Cathedral.  Unfortunately, this has been under construction for some time, so we could not get very good pictures of the outside, but we were able to tour the inside and Darren tried to get some decent pictures with the low lighting.  It is always freezing in these cathedrals, I can't imagine having to sit through a service!

Barcelona Cathedral

The inside of the Barcelona cathedral

That was everything we saw on Tuesday, more to come in the next post where we experienced the one sunny day of the whole trip!