Happenings of the Past Few Weeks

Hola a todos!
So I've gotten kind of lazy on this whole blogging thing but here's an update.
I've seen a lot more sites around Madrid and made my first trip outside the city yesterday.

Palacio Real
I went to the Royal Palace about two weeks ago and it was absolutely gorgeous! There is something to be said about the antiguity and lavish decor of palace's that you just can't find in the states. The first place I visited at the palace was the Armory. It had armor from the past five or six centuries that was just gorgeous. I've never had any interest in guns in my life but when I saw the intricate carvings on the hold shot guns I literally described them as beautiful. They also had different types of armor from everyone to your typical knight all the way up to the king. It was very interesting to see the distinctions in the various classes of armor. They also had horse armor. The face plates for the horses were especially interesting in my opinion.
Next we went inside some of the palace rooms. We saw everything from a royal dressing room, dining room, throne room, music room, to the yellow room and porcelein room. It was spectacular! I don't think I've ever walked around with my mouth hanging wide open in awe for such a long/continuous amount of time. Every room had lavish embellishments on the ceilings. Practically every room had an intricate fresco painted on the ceiling and intense gold and stone embellishments around the molding. They even had a yellow room where everything was in yellow down to the silk wall papering and a porcelein room which was gorgeous. Everything in the room was made out of porcelein including all of the decorative embellishments on the wall. What was even cooler was that you couldn't see a single joint because they were artistically covered in the pattern. The dining room which had a table to seat over 80 if I remember right (I counted) was gigantic for lack of a better word. Ansd the following rooms which house all the dishes, cutlery, glassware, etc was spectacular. In short, if you come to Madrid a stop at the Royal Palace is a must in my opinion.

The Reina Sofia
Last Saturday I went to the Reina Sofia. This is the modern art museum in Madrid which houses La Guernica and many other Picasso works as well as lots of other artists. Personally, modern art is not my favorite but it was still a very enjoyable visit. There were some paintings and sculptures that were particularly interesting to look at. I'm sad to say though that I'm not a huge fan of La Guernica. For those that don't know La Guernica is a painting by Picasso done in the early 1930s. Picasso was a communist and did not approve of the SPanish Fascist regime. Therefore, he painted this painting as a social comentary on the situation in Spain and was exiled shortly after never to return again. It is a very controversial and important painting in 20th century Spanish history.

Toledo

Toledo is a small town about an hour drive outside of Madrid. I visited yesterday and had a fabulous time! It is a town probably comparable to the UIUC campus or maybe double in terms of land size. It is on top of a hill and in general you spend the whole day going up and down hills when you walk through. The views from the top are gorgeous though. The town is surrounded by a midieval wall and is a mix of Moorish, Catholic, and Jewish heritage. It is full of architectural and cultural influences from these three religions which is an odd thing to have been preserved considering Spain's history with expelling the Moors and the Jews. It's most famous sites are the Cathedral, the house of EL Greco, and Alcazar although the latter two are currently closed for renovations.

Museo de America
I went to Museo de America this morning. It is a small museum dedicated to the Americas and reminded me of the exhibits at the Field Museum in Chicago about the Mayan, Incan, and Aztec cultures. This was much more in depth though I think. There were hords of artifacts from exploration in the New World. There were lots of maps from the time period which were very interesting to look at as well in my opinion. The museum only takes about an hour and a half to go through if you are stopping to look at every little thing like I did and not that well known but I found it very interesting and a nice little excursion for a Sunday morning. (Oh and by morning I mean I went at about 12:30pm)

That's all for now about site seeing in Madrid. I'm hoping to go to Las Fallas in Valencia next weekend which is this insane sounding festival where there are gigantic paper mache floats and huge parades and then at midnight they burn them in the streets! I also might go to Segovia next weekend and then the weekend after that is the start of Spring Break! Lots of traveling in the coming weeks-I can't wait!