Today we woke up renovated to a bustling, bouyant Madrid. We walked through several plazas, including Plaza Mayor, stopping for pastries and café along the way. We took a detour to buy Pastas de Almendra (soft cookies with an even softer almond-flavored filling) from a local convent. There is only a small sign on the convent door which reads, se vende dulces, which means, we sell sweets. The purchase was conducted entirely through a window with a lazy-susan-type door, allowing the nuns to sell their goods without being seen. We read about the place in our Rick Steves' travel guide and thought it would be fantastic to be the only tourists to know such a secret - to our dismay there were several other tourists holding their Rick Steves books, trying to find the concealed convent. After this we headed to the Palaceo Real, Spain's royal palace. This indubitably magnificent, though decadent, palace is considered to be one of the greatest in Europe. Each room is covered with frescos or elaborately-embroidered wallpaper, and filled with statues, clocks, and paintings of the royal family.
For lunch we ate like the locals, that is, standing up at a bar. We tried a bocadilla (a small ham sandwich) and gazpacho (a popular, cold, tomato soup). We then dropped off the rest of our Pastas at the hotel and headed to the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. This art museum contains the collection of the Baron and Baronness Thyssen and includes works from early Christian artists all the way up to Picasso. We especially enjoyed the impressionist works, as well as becoming acquainted with a few new artists like Joaquín Sorolla y Batista and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
In the evening everyone from the group for the Spanish class met at the hotel and then we all went to dinner together. We were served multiple courses of Spanish classics, including olives, ham, and calamari.
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