Day Thirtysix - Jun 26, 2012

Madrid, Spain to Night Train

High Point: The Third of May by Francisco Goya

Low Point: None really, a great day. Perhaps a little hot for Alaskans

Miles By Foot: 3

Today's Antiquities: Our marriage. Thirteen years today :)

Today's Weather: Hot in Madrid, in the high 90's. Lovely in the metro, train station and VIP lounge

Tonight's Lodging: Room #4, Night Train to Lisbon

Touristic Events: The Museo Prado (Day Two)

Travel Tip: Should you ever be looking to hang out in the Renfro VIP lounge of a Spanish train station, only two hours prior please

Daily Didactic

Today is a travel day so we got up and packed, had a breakfast of leftovers from Brian's gourmet supermercado dinner, checked out, and left our bags at the front desk for the day. We headed back up the street for "Prado Day Two". Bouyed by the fact that we were a little over half done, we set about exploring floor one. It was really a day where Goya and the northern Renaissance painters went head to head. Theresa leaned toward Goya, but Brian would give it to the Flemish. Brian, admittedly, is a big fan of the crazy work of Hieronymus Bosch, but found out he also liked Pieter Bruegel. Theresa was super impressed by "The Third of May" (and "The Second of May") by Goya and loved his "black paintings". Four hours later, we had checked off every room in the Prado. Nice. We needed to go back for our bags and decided to have our second anniversary dinner of the day (the first was at the Prado) back at our new favorite Madrid restaurant, Puerto Rico. We grabbed our bags around 6:00 and hit the metro to Chamartin station. Theresa had read that folks with important tickets (such as ours for a sleeper car) could hang out in the VIP room before boarding. Accurate, but not for three hours, so we had an anniversary snack at a nearby pub. Eventually, we spent a few hours in VIP before boarding the train and hitting the hay in the nicest train car we are likely to ever sleep in.