This past weekend I went to Madrid with my Art History class to see 3 famous museums there: El Museo del Prado, El Museo de la Reina Sofia, and El Museo Thyssen. The trip was organized for Saturday and Sunday, so a friend and I changed our train ticket to Madrid to arrive on Friday so we could have an extra day of traveling. We had planned on going to Avila and Segovia which are two smaller towns outside of Madrid. After finding our hostel and taking the metro to the bus station, we came into a little bit of a time crunch. I won't go into too many details but in the end we felt forced and pressured to pay 8 times as much as we planned for a ticket (one way) to Salamanca, not Avila or Segovia. Ha! We walked away, not really realizing what had just happened, and found out only shortly after than Salamanca y about two hours further away than Avila. We weren't able to exchange or cancel our tickets soo....off to Salamanca we went! It was an adventure and we definitely made the most of it since we "accidentally" paid way more than we thought for the tickets, it was the only way to keep a positive attitude about it! It ended up being a good trip, we saw some buildings we had been studying in our class and had coffee and churros in a small cafeteria. So! Back to Madrid we go!
Saturday we met up with the rest of the group at a great hotel across the street from both the Prado and the Reina Sofia. We saw those both on Saturday and it was pretty incredible. We saw so many that we had been studying and to see them up close was surreal. El Prado had many works by Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Juan de Ribera, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens (The 3 Graces!), Brughel, and thousands more! El Reina Sofia has Guernica by Picasso, which was incredible to see in person since I have studied it before. They also had a large surrealism floor but it was sadly closed to reorganize the gallery :(. I hope to go back in a few weeks to see their huge collection of Dali paintings with Andy. That night I was able to meet up with my friend from St. Thomas, Cathy, who has been studying in Madrid since August. It was great to catch up with her and see another friendly face in such a big city!
Sunday we walked through the city and saw the Palacio Real where all the Kings of Spain lived and Plaza Mayor which had a stamp collecting fair going on :). Sunday afternoon we saw the Thyssen museum which was my favorite of them all. It is a private collection of the Thyssen family who was VERY VERY rich and over two generations collected 800 pieces of art! I saw Dali, Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Itten, Cevanne, Goya, and thousands more! It was incredible! We only had an hour and a half before we had to catch our train back to Sevilla so I felt rushed but would love to walk through it again sometime and really be able to see the more contemporary stuff!
This week I have two midterm exams before Andy comes on THURSDAY!! I cannot wait! :) It is going to be so great to see him! :) However my mind is NOT set on studying for these mideterms, so hopefully I can get through them okay! We are going to be in Sevilla, then Granada, Lisbon, then Madrid. Sadly my professors are expecting me to read two novels for when I return...not sure how that is going to go!
This semester is just FLYING by and I cannot believe I will be home in two months! :( I miss my family and friends but will miss Spain soo much too. It is going to be hard for sure to come back and readjust to the American culture again.
Well my procrastinating should probably come to an end now....ugh! Time to study!
Besos,
Betsy
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment