We woke up relatively early to get to El Rastro, a famous Madrid market that goes from 9 to 2 on Sundays. We ate some bread for breakfast, then went on down to Plaza Callao to take the metro.
El Rastro
Is a beautiful, albeit very touristy, market in the La Latina section of Madrid. There was an amazing 4-man band playing instrumental big band music. We listened to them for a few minutes, tossed in some coins into the waiting guitar case, and proceeded to walk the ten steps it took to reach the market.
Colorful artisan shirts, jewelry, bags, shawls, backpacks, art, jackets for 5 euros, flamenco print posters, perfume, incense; all of these things were being sold in the market booths. We bought two jackets and backpacks, an awesome Don Quijote shirt, a long-sleeved shirt for my dad, a colorful, flowy artisan shirt for Vanessa and I, a beautiful flower-studded jar for the kitchen, and a flamenco poster.
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| La Gran Vía |
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| The awesome band by El Rastro |
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| Cool shirt |
Lunch
We walked a bit away from the El Rastro crowds and found a restaurant by a sunny plaza. I ate a delicious curried chicken, garlic mayo sauce, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with potato chips that had a very good yet spicy red ketchup drizzled on top.
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| Look at how cool this VW Minibus is! |
El Museo de Reina Sofía
We walked to the museum, taking in the mundane but beautiful Madrileño buildings and architecture. The museum was pretty cool, with some great exhibits featuring surrealism, Dalí, and Joan Miró. I really enjoyed the amazing creativity of those two painters, though some of both of their artwork was really disturbing. Because it was Sunday, the new modern art exhibit was unfortunately closed.
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| It´s a Pokemon scultpture thing! |
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| A Picasso eye cut-out |
Caixa Forum
We then walked to the Caixa Forum building, east of El Rastro and the art museum. This building is special not just because it holds tons of money in it since it´s a bank, but because of the 24 METER-HIGH VERTICAL GARDEN, complete with water slide (jk about the last part, but high five if you got the Emperor´s New Groove reference). There were begonias, liriope, ferns, moss, sedum, daisies, and many other plant species, all arranged beautifully. It was a sight to see for sure. I am fascinated with vertical gardening, so I was very happy to see it being used here in Madrid as an educational tool and spectacle.
We tried to take the metro back to the apartment, we really did. It was really frustrating actually. I wanted to take the Atocha metro station because of this incredible author named Ben Lerner who wrote a book titled Waiting at Atocha Station. Of course, the station was closed. As was the next-closest station. And the next one. At which point it was pointless to take a metro because we were practically at Puerta del Sol.
Thank goodness for chocolate--it heals everything. We passed a chocolatería on the way and got a divine creation: bite-sized churros + copious amounts of hot Nocilla + paper cups and dagger sticks = heaven.
We all chilled for the rest of the day once we finally got back to the apartment, seeing as how we had walked for the last eight hours.
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