Not my kind of tour

Day 39
We had meant to be up early for a bike tour of Madrid, but it was raining, and Al was still jet lagged so we decided to skip the tour and sleep more. When we finally did get going we headed straight to the Prado, the museum in Madrid.

There were so many amazing works are art here its hard to just pick a few to write about. We spent about 5 hours in the museum. Not many of the descriptions were in English and it was nice to have Al there to translate for me. There was a table by Bosch about the seven deadly sins. We couldn´t seem to remember them all at the time and tried to guess what was what on the table. We think we got most of them, but not all. The Garden of Earthy Delights, also by Bosch, was far more stunning in person than it had looked on Rick Steves. A Zurbaran, called Apparition of the Apostle St. Peter to St. Peter Nolasco, played with angles and was a bit uncomfortable to look at because of the odd setting. There were loads of Goyas and a few El Grecko´s. My favorite, and a painting that I had wanted to see for some time, was Meninas by Velazques, was far more stunning than I could have ever imagined.

We were disappointed to see that it was still raining when we left the museum. Instead of wandering the gardens near the Prado we simply picked up some food and Al made us dinner at the hostel.

Early on in the day we had decided to take part in a pub crawl. Al had never done anything like this before and they promised that this was the cheapest way to have a night out in Madrid. On the way to the first bar (we hadn´t paid yet) our guide made a phone call and then some guy met him on the corner and handed him tickets. Al started to feel like the whole thing was shady and I agreed. At the first bar we decided that the loud American music bar was not our scene so we ditched while the guide wasn´t looking.

We ended up at a place around the corner that was much more quiet and played Spanish music. We split a pitcher of sangria and some tapas. Our total bill was a few euros less than the tour would have been and we had a more Spanish experience.