Madrid - Day 2 dodging the heat, The Temple & The Prado

Temple * Gurrea Family * Prado * Plaza Del Sol

13,000 Steps

I'm not sure how much longer we can continue living like Madrilenos - out late, up late, and dodging the heat.  It's tiring.  I don't know how they do it.  Even the Missionaries had a modified schedule to accommodate the Spaniards.  They work until 10:30 p.m., in bed by 11:30 p.m., up at 7:30 a.m. - basically an hour later than all the other missionaries in the world.  Tonight we were in downtown Madrid at 10:30 drinking and eating churros with chocolate (yum - think warm, chocolate pudding) and everyone was out, eating, shopping, hanging - even kids - all over the place.  We're sleeping in tomorrow.

We figured out the recipe to avoid the Madrid heat (it got over 100* today).  Spend 2 1/2 hours in the air conditioned Temple, have a 2 hour lunch with Stewart's friends, spend 2 1/2 hour in the air conditioned Prado museum, eat dinner inside an air conditioned restaurant, then walk around town at 9:30 at night.

This morning we went to the temple for baptisms.  Stewart lost his wallet this week so he stayed outside with Charlie and read, played games, drew pictures of the temple etc while the rest of us did baptisms.  I was surprised by how many people were there for the 10:00 baptismal session - probably 20 women and 3 men.  Languages spoken were Spanish, French, Portuguese & English.  Eric was one of the few priesthood leaders so he performed most of the baptisms (in Spanish).  The temple president gave a great devotional on the sacrifice we give to the Lord when we come to the temple - not only a broken heart and a contrite spirit, but our own family names.  Thanks to Catherine Frazier and Ray Springer's granddaughter we had 18 family names with us.  We were in the temple for over 2 hours and it was really nice.  We even ran into a family from the Philippines that we had met in Verona.

A family from Stewart's area in Alcala invited us over for lunch.  One of Stewart's former companions from Portugal is living with them right now while he is back in Spain working and dating a Spanish girl.  The family is from Argentina and actually lived in Utah for 8 years before moving to Spain.  They have 3 children, one of whom is Ian, the boy that Charlie met on Sunday.  Charlie and Ian ran around outside after lunch having a water gun fight while we visited.  It's humbling to meet such good people who become family to these young missionaries while they are far from home.

After lunch we went to the Prado museum in downtown Madrid.  The Prado rivals the Uffizi as far as a true art museum goes (only paintings).  In some ways I liked it better than the Uffizi.  I love looking at traditional Renaissance Art - but in addition to the typical paintings you'd expect from the Renaissance we saw many paintings from El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya.  We only walked 13,000 steps today (we walked 26,000 steps when we went to the Louvre) - but our feet were still tired (the heat I'm sure).

After the Prado and dinner at a very Americanesque diner (sometimes easy is better than traditional with 7 people) we wander the streets of Madrid to find the best churros con chocolate recommended from our guide book.  It was ridiculously hot to be having hot chocolate, but there was air conditioning and there's never a really good reason not to eat chocolate.

Lunch with the Gurrea Family