Madrid, Spain--Day 18

Today I first went to the Post Office in the Plaza de Independencia via the Subway to mail a few things back to the States. The post office here is a huge gorgeous building and I had no trouble finding it or getting my mail sent away. Luckily the Post Office is really close to the Museo de Prado, which is a really amazing art museum. So I walked over there and spent the rest of the early afternoon on an individual audio tour learning about the paintings. The Prado is a very large museum and houses several famous paintings from very prominent Spanish artists including Goya, El Greco and Velázquez. I spent a few hours at the museum and then about an hour in the Botanical Gardens which are also very impressive and very near the museum.

After all of this I then walked back towards my hotel, finally finding the Plaza Mayor which is a large square with several cafés, one of which I stopped at to eat lunch. The weather was better today that yesterday so it was nice to grab a seat and sit outside eating lunch in the Plaza, listening to music being played by several musicians playing in the square. After lunch I walked some more and found the Plaza del Sol (from yesterday!) and realized just how close I was to the Plaza Mayor. Oh well! I took the Subway back to my hotel and am writing this before I got eat dinner, as I am checking out of my hotel at 10 o’clock tonight to catch my plane to South Africa which leaves at 12:45 in the morning! I have some packing that needs to get done and hopefully I will be able to finally get into my email, which has been “unavailable” according to the website. Until then…



(c) 2004 Sarah Galbraith. All Rights Reserved.