Madrid

After a very long day of sightseeing in the Spanish capital we´re finally back at our hotel, Suites Vienna, where we´re going to all turn in for a solid nap before heading out for dinner later. I haven´t slept more than two hours since yesterday morning so I am looking forward to some good shut-eye.

When we arrived in Madrid (at the same airport where I slept one night a few years back on the way from Rome to Morocco), we all had a good surprise when we discovered that the guy driving us to the hotel, Alex, was from Georgia!  I got to practice the little Georgian I know from Lana and her family.  He´s a fantastic guy and will be driving us to a medieval town called Segovia tomorrow.

Today we started by taking a walk around Puerta del Sol, the social and geographical central point of Madrid, and the geographic epicenter of all of Spain.  The plaza is totally transformed right now since there´ve been some major youth protests recently (unemployment among those less than 30 is something like 50%). Tents and posters are strewn everywhere. We walked all over the old part of the city, which is beautiful, and then made our way to the main palace (just massive) and the Royal theater where we took a tour in Spanish (I was able to understand about 2/3 of what the guide way saying and my brother translated the rest). 

After that, we grabbed lunch at an amazing renovated marketplace and then visited a small art museum by the area where Spencer went to school here which was the old house and studio of Sorolla. His work was all stunning. From there we visited the major park of Madrid and took a brief rest, and then finished up at the Prado, one of the largest art museums in the world, where there were incredible large format paintings by Velazquez, Goya, Titian, Reubans, DaVinci, you name it.  I wish we had more time there, but time to move on and see more great things...