Day 1.5 Madrid (James)

Day 1.5 Madrid 

Last day in Madrid.  Our flight tomorrow morning is early enough to encourage us and our budgets to spend the night at the airport.  This means a full day in Madrid and then a late subway to the airport.

Running around the city is fun and all, but it can be a bit cumbersome with a full backpack.  Our first stop was the Prada Museum.  Free for kids under 18, it was perfect way to start the day and Bree agreed to wait outside with our backpacks.  The paintings were amazing. it was heavily represented by Spanish painters, go figure.  Goya seemingly had half the museum.  There were others, though, Rembrandt, Raphael, just to name a couple others.  I especially liked the Velazquez, in particular, the "buffoons," or so they were called.  Apparently you couldn't be an upwardly mobile gentlemen of note unless you owned a mentally or physically disabled person at the time.  The portraits of these people seemed real, like the artist didn't feel the pressure to portray their client in a way that reminds them that they were indeed paid to paint them in the best light.  in these paintings I saw humans.  In all the others I saw incredibly inflated egos.

We finished the museum around 11am, leaving the vast majority of the day open.  One great thing about Madrid is that you can't go to far without running into a well groomed park that positively calls for you to sit in it's shade.  We found such respite from the heat in Buen Retiro park.  This place is huge.  We parked our bags near an artificial lake and Bree and the girls all parted to explore while I napped with the backpacks at my feet.  The lake was filled with rentable rowboats and pretty soon I caught a glimpse of Deija and Auna paddling towards the banks.  Hours passed blissfully by and as the sun was making it's final call, we boarded a subway towards Barajas airport.

We encountered no problems getting there and found our terminal.  We all looked at the clock.  11pm.  12 hours to kill.  Unfortunately all this airport had was a incredibly hard tile floor.  Sleep was near impossible.  In fact, I'm still awake right now as I write.  Since its the quiet hours for passengers, all the construction work is being done now.  A worker 50 feet away is jackhammering one of the floor tiles to be replaced.  I think I might go walk around....

James