Okay, so after a relaxing 14 hour train ride through French countryside, which I’m sure would have been lovely had the earth stopped rotating long enough for the sun to stay up, I arrived in Madrid. I ordered my ticket to Lisbon in Spanish and felt like a philologist. Here we go! Finally a language I can sort of understand.

Now here is something worth noting. Spain is the first country I’ve been to on this little adventure where I have actually been mistaken for a local. I must say it was pretty exciting. Everyone was speaking to me in Spanish and as long as I kept saying ‘si’ to everything, they never caught on! Ha!

I started my adventure at the Prado where I nearly dropped dead in the Velazquez room. I was an art history minor in college and seeing Las Meninas was like meeting a celebrity. I wrote a ten page paper on this painting alone! There were so many great paintings by Goya, Raphael, Caravaggio…oh man, just great.

So after the Prado I basically just wandered around the city. There were many plazas and fountains and interesting streets to explore, but there was still more art to see. I wondered if seeing two museums in one day was a bit excessive but I decided that it was actually a good amount. So I went to see Picasso’s Guernica at the modern art museum (the actually name of the museum is about fifteen words long and I forgot to remember it). But Guernica is amazing, and as large as expected.

Since I wasn’t planning on staying out until 6am and getting sauced (which, along with seeing art, is the other thing people do in Madrid) I headed back to the train station and spent my last hour in the city sewing patches onto my bag. So once again, another successful day of speed sightseeing. I have a feeling the pace will be a bit slower when I meet my family… my dad and brother in particular are huge fans of chillin’.