Madrid 9/7/2008

When we woke up this morning we found out we were still in Madrid. So, we tried to make the most of it.

First, we went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which is a modern art museum. The art was pretty cool, but the main reason we went was to see the addition done by Jean Nouvel. He added some elevators on one side and a new modern wing on the opposite side. There’s large covered courtyard surrounded by temporary exhibit space, offices, and the library. The temporary exhibit had all digital media that was my favorite exhibit.

After this museum we went to the Caixa Forum. This is a building designed by Herzog and de Meuron. It was a power station built in 1899 that was converted into an art gallery. They raised the roof several stories and extended the façade with perforated metal. The entire structure was also raised off the ground to let the plaza in front of the building spill underneath it so that you enter the building beneath its center. The exhibit inside was on images and videos of Charlie Chaplin (some real old dude with a moustache who was real quiet). The building was one of my favorites that I have seen so far, and we walked all around it.

After the Caixa Forum we walked to this big old park. It was nice to stroll around for a while. There were trees and grasses and lakes and paths. We took a nap for a while. When we woke up we heard a distant rumbling and followed it until we found several drum circles. We watched them for a while. Some were better than others.

It was getting late so we walked back to the hostel. The meal we had the first night we were in Madrid was so good we decided to go back and get the exact same thing again. Turns out it was good AGAIN!! We got some desert and some beers and hit the hay.

We head back to Prague tomorrow. We are sad that our vacation is over and that we will have to do real schoolwork sometime soon, but we are looking forward to exploring Prague and seeing our friends.