Madrid

When traveling in Spain, or even Europe in general, a trip to Madrid, the country's capital located at its center, is an essential part of your vacation. With a population of five million, Madrid is characterized for its intense cultural and artistic activity and a very active night life as a city that is sure to be a destination on bucket lists across the globe. To our great fortune, last Saturday everyone arrived at the bus station on time so we could spend the weekend away from the small, quaint life in Segovia in one of the great cities of the world.

After an hour long bus ride and some time in the subterranean world of Madrid's metro system, we dropped our bags at the Aparthotel Madroño and stepped into La Puerta del Sol, or in English the Gate of the Sun, a wide open plaza that acts like Times Square does for New York City, a place where masses of people from all walks of life gather like ants on an anthill scurrying in and out of designer stores and souvenir shops and scrambling to capture with a camera lens the magic of the city. From there, we took a walking tour of the Antiguo Madrid, seeing the Royal Palace where King Juan Carlos I and his family live, la Catedral, and the Plaza Mayor that is encircled by café tables topped with té and café con leche. Everywhere we walked, musicians played flutes, accordions, and guitars in front of an upside down hat that held their coins, and men who appeared to be headless walked the sidewalks in search of viewers. Although one could spend hours just watching the variety of people pass by on the street, the main attractions of our visit were el Museo del Prado and el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia that combined hold the greatest collection of the works of Spanish master painters: Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, El Greco, Salvador Dalí, José Ribera, Joan Miró, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, and many others.

It was crucial that we studied our maps and chose carefully which rooms in the museums we wished to study, because to see the entire museum, would take much longer than the two hours we were allotted. As we entered each room for the first time, it was like the walls were a giant plastic bag, as the paintings hanging there sucked the air out of our lungs and halted our process of respiration; the view was breathtaking. To see a painting you have studied and analyzed in classes for years and years in its true form, suspended and larger then you would have ever imagined raw before your eyes is a completely unique experience. Each painting became a river in the current of our emotions. Some brought tears, like Picasso's Guernica or provoked curiosity like Velázquez's Las Meninas. The feeling was such that everyone who had walked into those museums, had walked out feeling more connected to the world, an essential link on the six billion year old chain of the Earth that without such link, would not exist as it does today.

Following the museum visit, we were of course given free time to explore the city for ourselves. Some took a walk in Madrid's beautiful, nature-packed botanical gardens, others went out to eat at tapas bars sharing small courses of exotic foods, and others headed toward the Corte Inglés, where the street made for shoppers begins. All in two days we had experienced what we could of the capital. After much walking, picture viewing, and spending some euros, we were all exhausted, and despite the grandeur of the city, we couldn't wait to return to the smaller city we now know as home: Segovia.