Madrid Royal Palace * Cookies from Nuns * Reina Sofia
22,000 steps
Although our apartment has a small A/C unit in the living room, the air has a hard time circulating to the back bedrooms (there are 4 bedrooms down the hall). In the middle of the night Charlie woke up with a splitting headache, I suspect from the heat. We thought he had fallen off his bed and hit his head, so I gave him some Ibuprofen that upset his stomach and then he threw up - fun stuff! We were up with him for a couple of hours and finally ended up sleeping on the couch with him by the A/C unit. Eric had closed all the blinds so the apartment was pitch black and like sleeping in a cave. So, I suspect it was no surprise that after a rough night with Charlie and a late night on the town we slept in until 10:00. In fact, I still had to wake up a couple of kids at 11:00.
Charlie seemed to be fine when he woke up - thank heavens. Also, thank heavens some clouds had rolled in and although hot, the sun wasn't beating down on us. Although it got close, I doubt it reached 100* today. Our apartment in only about a 10 minute drive from downtown (a 7 minute drive the other way to the temple) and it's actually cheaper to drive into town and pay for parking than to pay for 7 round trip tickets on a bus. Eric is a masterful European driver now and downtown Madrid does not intimidate him (it's really no worse than driving in Southern CA or Washington DC).
Downtown Madrid is a nothing compared to the other Capitol cities we have visited. After walking down the main areas for an hour we'd seen it (with the exception of it's museums). We poked our heads into some shops, enjoyed the pedestrian streets, but after that - not much. I was underwhelmed by Madrid.
We visited the Royal Palace - which was impressive - 3rd in size after Versailles and Vienna. In some ways I liked this Palace better than Versailles. Because the palace is still in use for official events, private parties, etc, etc, it is well maintained and easy to imagine fancy people doing fancy things here. There was a dining room table that could seat 144 people - that room rivaled the room of mirrors in Versailles. Because of the cloud cover we were able to sit under a tree and enjoy our picnic of cheese, Jamon Serano, fruit, and a cookie.
Afterwards we searched out a convent I had read about where cloistered nuns sell cookies. Charlie kept saying, let's go find the Oyster Nuns and buy their cookies. We had to ring their bell and wait - a long time, I guess they walk slowly in Convents (we kept thinking of the Nuns in the Sound of Music walking slowly to let the German officials inside). They opened the door and we let ourselves inside - during the entire time we never saw a soul. We found the exchange area and the nun put the cookies available to buy on a turn stile and we told her which ones we wanted (she talked to us through the wall). We took our cookies, put our money on the wheel and then let ourselves out. The cookies were good - a lemon shortbread. Emma was worried about eating cookies from a faceless Nun.
We wandered through some more downtown streets and Emma and Maren were dying to go shopping at Zara - a Spanish H&M shop. To keep everyone happy we let them shop for almost an hour while the rest of us sat on some steps inside and enjoyed the air conditioned store. They both purchased a couple of shirts that I'm sure we could have found at H&M in the mall - but it was a good way to pass some time and get out of the heat.
Our final stop of the day was the Reina Sofia modern art Museum. It was VERY different from anything we've seen before - ink splotches, white canvases, things Charlie could have drawn in church - BUT, we did get to see early 20th century Modern art from Miro, Kadinskly, Picasso, Rothko, Gris, Dali, and others. The highlight was Picasso's Guernica which is huge! We actually drove through the town of Guernica after we picked up Stewart. (I won't go into details about why Picasso painted this story - but it is the ultimate anti-war art of it's time).
Dinner was involved as Stewart wanted to make a Spanish Tortilla and Maren wanted to make Spanish hot chocolate. Both were a huge success, but we weren't eating until 10:30 which is just WAY too late for dinner. I guess it's good we had breakfast at noon and lunch at 4:00. We leave Madrid tomorrow and hopefully this crazy late schedule.
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| Madrid Royal Palace |
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| Reina Sofai |
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