We enjoyed our hotel breakfast and walked down to the Sofia Reina museum. On our way, we stopped by the Vertical Gardens at Caixa Form, a modern art exhibit place. You can see the vertical gardens in the picture below:
We finally made it to Sobrino de Botin in the Latin Quarter and for our 3:30 pm reservation; apparently this is the oldest restaurant in the world and was founded in 1725. I picked it because I thought my dad would like the fact that Hemingway had eaten here and had written about it in the "The Sun Also Rises" and Goya had worked here as a waiter when he was a student. Here are a few photos of the dining experience:
After the few blocks, we arrived at the national museum, where my parents entered for free. Here's a photo of my mom at one of the entrances:
The museum has a courtyard and many rooms where you cannot take any photos and they are all a bit separated from one another. So to get a taste of the experience, here's a picture of one of the long hallways that wrap around the courtyard and where we enjoyed many benches for resting:
Although there are no photos, the main reason to visit Sofia Reina is to see Guernica - perhaps Picasso's most monumental piece of work and Spain's most famous painting. My parents were blown away by it and my mom said she was thrilled to have finally seen it in real life.
We walked through and also saw Luis Buñuel films, Dali, Miro, Gris, and others. The museum is more modern and my mom was shocked that my brother and I knew these films. My brother had seen "Los Olivados" in Spanish class, and I had watched "Un Chien Andalou" in French class. Unfortunately, these films are tough to stomach, but my mom was at least impressed by our high school education.
After a few hours, we walked over to the Lavapies metro station and got off at about 4 stops to see the Debod Temple which is situated inside a beautiful park. I liken it to the Temple of Dendur that sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had seen it and even went inside on my 2014 trip to Madrid, but my parents said a photo was enough as shown below:
We walked down along the park to see if we could catch a bus. We admired the Spanish architecture and my dad asked me to take a photo of him in front of this building:
The bus was going to arrive in 16 minutes per the bus tracker, so we opted to take a taxi to Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, a chapel where Goya is interred and where his frescos depicting Saint Anthony can be seen via mirrors strategically placed around the chapel. Again, you can't take photos here, but my parents enjoyed this quiet chapel which no longer has religious services to preserve the frescos. As such, an identical chapel was built next to it. Here's a photo in front of the original chapel:
We walked over to the bus stop in case we could get on a bus, and one was just arriving - perfecto! We took it a few stops to Plaza de España and hopped on the metro to Puerta Del Sol - the center of the city and Madrid's Times Square, replete with cartoon characters peddling for photo opportunities. They were all wearing the soccer jerseys of Athético Madrid and Chelsea who were playing tonight in a Championship League game as explained by our private transfer driver last night.
I took this panorama as my dad and brother rest by the fountain and my mom went exploring:
After trying to look for some shoes for my mom, we walked through Plaza Mayor where you could a hear a chorus of Chelsea fans in blue shirts singing various English songs and drinking beer. I've never been to a South American or European soccer match, but I'm sure by the likes of this, it's incredibly intense and the city was clearly excited for the match. Here's a college of our Plaza Mayor experience:
So I had planned this late lunch as we weren't planning dinner and boy, did we eat! The restaurant is known for their roasted suckling pig and my mom and I loved every juicy morsel and crispy skin of ours. Our roasted pig also came with Andalusian Gazpacho and ice cream while my dad had blood sausage and then a fish stew, while Justin enjoyed a Botin filet mignon. I also had my first delicious Rioja which I suspect will be the first of many on this trip - a collage of our satisfying meal below:
As we walked off our meal and was pondering whether we should take the metro back to our hotel, my mom yelped and my brother and I turned around. Apparently a guy had stuck his hand down the front of my mom's backpack and ran off and two kind people were asking my mom if she was ok and missing anything. I translated a little and my mom had mostly worn her backpack in front on this trip, but wasn't at this specific moment. But my mom wasn't that phased as she had nestled her wallet and phone deep in the bottom of her zippered part of her bag, while the front were just her reading glasses. She quipped, I'm sure he would have been disappointed if he had taken them and has good vision, but he had taken nothing. In all my travels, I think this is the first time anything like this had happened.
At this point, we hopped in a cab and headed to our hotel to rest for The Prado Museum which is free from 6 pm to 8 pm nightly and across the street from our hotel. After our hour rest, we stood in line for 30 minutes and enjoyed this amazing museum. Again, no photos, but of course the most famous Goyas, Velasquez, El Grecos, and many more. My parents thoroughly enjoyed seeing Velasquez's Las Meninas and Goya's 3rd of May (which was the cover of my European history textbook in high school).
Although our hotel clerk warned the line would be long and the museum crowded, by NY and Parisian standards, this was nothing. There were only 5 other people looking at Las Meninas at the same time as us. I had been here in the afternoon in 2014 and the museum was practically empty.
Also, the museum plan makes it really easy for you to see all the masterpieces as the room locations are listed and we marked them off as we went from gallery to gallery. At one point, a security guard came up to me and asked me if I was ok that the museum was closing in 20 minutes. I was a little confused, and he said, he saw that I was checking off each masterpiece and he wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be disappointed by running out of time. I told him, we had seen the Bosch, the Goyas, and Velasquez, and all we had left were the El Grecos. He nodded with approval, smiled, and just said, "8B". Seriously, the hospitality of the Spanish people is wonderful that he could be worried I didn't get to see what I wanted. Little does he know this is my 2nd time here and that we may possibly come again tomorrow.
The bells finally rang and it was time to leave, so we headed to a bench outside and reviewed what we had seen. Here's a photo of my mom in front of one of the entrances and my parents reviewing the museum plan and guide - my mom said since the museum had the right amount of people, there was such great energy:
So after our scavenger hunt through the world famous Prado, we walked across the street to our hotel. We all remarked running around the musuem was easier knowing that we were just across the street from our hotel. After some fresh fruit water and candies from our lobby, we all decided to get some rest for our last day in Madrid.
Our Spanish has sure come in handy today as many don't speak English, and the waiters and taxi driver seemed to enjoy conversing with us. I think they're a bit shocked that my brother and I can engage - Justin speaks it much more comfortably than I do and he asks more thorough and conversational questions. The taxi driver told us he was from Cadiz, preferred the country, but managing the milk and cows was hard work. My parents and I sit back as we listen to my brother's accent and comfortable demeanor. Seriously, Korean Americans speaking Spanish - watch out Spain, we're charming!
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