Life in the Old World: Day #4 Church, museums and tapas

Sunday morning we woke up and went to a local bakery to get some pastries for breakfast. The pastries here are so good! We went to church and then headed home for some lunch. After lunch we headed out to a couple of the museums here in Madrid, El Prado and Reina Sofia. The Reina Sofia is a modern arts museum where we saw 'Guernica' by Picasso. He painted it in response to Hitler bombing this city during the Spanish Civil War. Apparently Hitler and Franco were friends and Hitler wanted to try bombing a city from the air and Franco offered him to bomb a city that was on the opposite side of the war as Franco. The painting created quite a bit of controversy and had to be taken into hiding for a while to keep it from being destroyed. After the Reina Sofia we walked over to Palacio Cibeles to show them the old post office building and then we headed back to the Prado.

After the Prado we went to find some good tapas places. The first place we went to was fun. There was a group of Spaniards who were there and they were singing Christmas carols. It was fun to listen to. The next place we went to doesn't have free tapas but they always have some interesting ones. None of them appealed to me because most of them had eel, squid, liver or some other odd looking thing on the bread so I sat this place out. Mom, Ben, Dad and Amy were a little more adventurous though and they all tried something.

After the second place we decided to head back. On the way to our place, we walked by Cortylandia and the show was about to start so we stuck around to see it. The street was an absolute zoo! There were thousands of people there to see it! There are three side streets that lead to the main street where the show is and even the side streets were jam packed with people! We stayed for about 10 or 15 minutes and then headed out. We had seen enough!

Picking out our pastries.