Sleep…Eat…Explore…Drink…Eat…Explore…Drink…Eat…..Repeating of course…Through a random train ride in there and you have our trip in two lines.
Since sleeping is pretty boring, let’s talk about the other details.
Eat: Breakfast was usual, coffee and a croissant.
Explore: We attempted to go to the Prado Museum, unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. When we tried to enter, they told us it was closed (more on this later). So with Eli fuming, because this museum holds the largest collection of Goya works, we set out to our next destination.
Explore: The Royal Botanical Gardens. Well, this place was ok, but it would have been really cool in the spring or summer, most of the flowers were not blooming, so the majority of the place was just walkways with shrubbery. Highlights here were the bonsai tree collection, and the cactus collection. It did however have species of plants from all over the world, so the flyer giving itself a description of a “plant museum” was pretty accurate.
Eat + Drink: Not too exciting here, just a beer and a sandwich for lunch.
Explore: Walking past the Prado museum, we were determined to find out why the place was closed. I failed to mention earlier, that place was surrounded by cops, ambulances, tv crews and just a gaggle of people standing around. So…. After asking a few people we find out that a new wing of the museum is being unveiled today and the king is coming for a visit!!! So he had the whole place closed so he could peruse it by himself. What an ass, ruining our visit for his selfish needs. We also got to get a glimpse of him and the prince as they entered… the prince was wearing a pink tie. Lol
Eat + Drink: Coffee and churros… those things are so yummy.
Explore: Since we couldn’t get into the Prado, we traveled onward to the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. A majority of the museum used to be privately owned until they sold it to Spain for a mere $350 million. Stealing a line from Rick Steves, which was right on, “it’s basically minor works by major artists and major works by minor artists”.
Drink + Sleep: Night Train to Lisbon. We pick up our bags from the hotel, grab a metro to the station across town, and wait patiently for our train to arrive. An hour later, we’re getting ready to open a bottle of wine, when we noticed some people we had seen before. What a coincidence, we had met two nice ladies from Indiana on our journey from Barcelona to the south of Spain a week prior, and now they were on the same night train. We chit chatted a bit and when they found out Eli’s birthday was in an hour, they decided that they needed to buy us a bottle of wine to celebrate. So off to the train bar we go. We share a bottle, and then hit the institutional style bunk beds that they call a hotel train.
WTF:
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