Madrid y Toledo

First off, thank you Lisa and Aaron for Rick Steve's! It was a "sorpresa con la cena", como dijo mi madre antes de cenar. The guide was very very useful for my trip to Madrid and Toledo. I went with my friend Jackie, as no one else wanted to go because we have midterms this week, but we studied on the bus to and from Madrid. We left very early on Friday morning and got to Madrid around 11, checked into our hostal and then set off! On friday we went to El Prado, said to be one of the best museums in Europe. There we saw the famous Goya, who painted for the courts of Spain and later in his life went crazy and painted some of the best art Spain has seen. This is an example...

It's called Saturn...and he's eating his son Mars. Fun and crazy.
We took a break from art and walked around a beautiful park.

Next we went to El museo nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. It's a modern art museum, containing Picasso's most famous work, La Guernica, which depicts Hitler's bombing of the city Guernica, which the dictator Franco allowed. This is me outside the ultra-modern looking museum.

The next day we decided to go to Toledo, a city south of Madrid which used to be the capital of Spain, and is almost perfectly preserved in it's medieval state. To get there we took a high speed train, which cut the trip in half, only 30 minutes away. Here is the beautiful train station we left Madrid out of.

In Toledo, we went to the Cathedral, which is one of the most beautiful in Europe, and has this interesting hole in the ceiling cut to let in light.

Later we took a tourist train through and around the city for some beautiful views(thanks for the recommendation Lisa, it was awesome!). Here is a panoramic shot of Toledo, a classical medieval hilltop town.

This is Jackie and I the next day back in Madrid, in front of "Don Quijote." There are many many people like this on the street, but this one was too fun to pass up.

We spent the rest of the day walking around Madrid, an incredibly beautiful and fun city, and then headed on a late bus back to Valencia. Here are some pictures of walking around in Madrid, of the royal palace and the Plaza Mayor(with Rick Steve's). It was a great trip!