If you are traveling to Spain and thinking about skipping Madrid, I have two reasons that you need to reconsider: the Museo del Prado and the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.  Literally you can spend the majority of a day in each (and we did in the Museo del Prado!), but I wanted to hit some of the main highlights to both sway you to make these stops and help you prioritize if you are shorter on time.

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
Admission: 8 Euro
Free Tuesdays through Friday from 7pm to 9 pm

This is the modern art museum for Madrid, and the major highlight is Picasso's "Guernica".  Absolutely not to be missed.  Head to room 206 and this massive painting takes up the entire room.  Surrounding rooms show initial drafts and versions which are completely fascinating in themselves.  You can literally see Picasso's thought process as he changes the mouth of the horse or the position of an arm.

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Also on display are multiple works by Spanish modernist masters Dali and Miro, and a great selection of modern female artists.

You may have seen "Guernica" in a textbook, but you cannot appreciate the scale of it until you see it in person like this.  It is completely overwhelming and desperate and breathtaking.  via

Museo Del Prado
Admission: 14 Euro
Free Admission Monday through Saturday from 6pm to 8pm

Ok I have to admit that I am not the biggest modern art enthusiast so I went to the free after hours museum open house at the Reina Sofia.  It was the perfect amount of time to see "Guernica" and a good assortment of Dali, Miro, and various others.  But I absolutely cannot imagine trying to see the Museo Del Prado in 2 hours so admission is definitely worth the 14 Euro.  You need to spend at minimum 4 hours there to get a good appreciation, and then you would just be skimming the surface. Not to be missed in the Museo Del Prado are:

"Saturn Devouring His Son" by Francisco Goya via

The Goya section is a major highlight of the Museo Del Prado.  The entire Goya "Black Paintings" selection is completely involving, especially this piece and the paintings of witchcraft and warlocks.  The color palate is dark and smoky, almost like you are standing in a dark room looking at them.  Your eyes have to strain to see the details.  It's an incredible effect. Remember, these were painted in the early 1820s but there is something so shockingly modern to them.  And again, until you are up close and see those individual brush strokes, and the layers of paint it takes to make that "looking into a tunnel at the dark places of humanity effect," you can't really appreciate how impressive these are.

"Las Meninas" by Velazquez via

Of course there's a large selection of Spanish favorite Velazquez.  As the royal commissioned artist of his time, he has a ton of royalTy paintings, none probably as self aware and celebrated as "Las Meninas" above where you can see the artist painting a portrait of the king and queen reflected in a mirror in the back of the room. Look carefully and you can spot them!

small section from "Garden of Earthly Delight" by Heironymous Bosch via

There are few sections of the museum where you are going to have wait your turn even though with the incredible expanse of a museum like the Prado you'd expect to be the only one in each room.  Not so.  You'll have to stake your ground for Goya and Velazquez favorites of course, but the biggest line was at the "Garden of Earthly Delight" by Bosch.  The reason?  Looking at Bosch is like looking at a really trippy 70s album cover; there's a ton going on in every few centimeters.  As you can see in this sampling above (and follow the link above to more detail isolations), there is a lot of seriously creepy stuff going on.  Take into account that this was painted sometime between 1490 and 1510, and you have arguably the most fascinating painting in the building and people definitely appreciate that.

"Virgen and Child Surrounded by Angels" by Jean Fouquet via

So because I had stamped out Bosch as the main target of our attack, we spent a lot of time in the Medieval art section as a side effect.  You don't realize how much there is to see At the Prado when you first get started.  After looking at a ton of religious paintings, you start to recognize the truly zany ones for how special they are.  This Fouquet painting dated at 1450 was a scene stealer.  The strange proportions of Mary's forehead, the weird blue and red angels that look like medieval gummy bears.  This painting is so far ahead of its time its shocking.  I can almost see cubism coming out of her giant forehead.  This painting was a temporary exhibit last spring, so I hope it's still there for you to see on your visit.  I keep finding myself contemplating this one at odd times.  The colors!  The weirdness!  You may be surprised at what art sticks with you.

After spending a few days in Valencia, my husband and I hopped a two hour train ride to Madrid for a two-day tour.  After the very traditional atmosphere of Valencia, Madrid was a stark change of pace.  The atmosphere is decidedly less "old-world," with a lot of newer construction and Western transplants (Starbucks, McDonalds, etc).  There was also quite a bit of political unrest while we were there (a protest was occurring just a few streets down from the palace) since the economy at the time was stuttering and the unemployment rate was rising.  Just like the US, European countries have definitely been financially affected by the economic challenges of recent years.  Despite this unrest, we felt very welcomed pretty much everywhere we stopped as tourists, and found that Madrid had plenty to offer all visitors, from the great architecture to the not-to-be-missed art museums.  Here's the best of our trip:

Plaza Mayor:  This is a central tourist attraction, and be prepared for a lot of street performers awaiting you inside.  The site has a sordid history, being the setting for many trials during the Spanish Inquisition.

Some pretty creative street performers all over Madrid.  The only issue we had was with a group of people selling flowers outside of the train station.  Sometimes these people will not take no for an answer and you have to get more aggressive with walking away.  Definitely stay on your guard in Madrid for pickpockets because this is a huge tourist area.   Honestly we never had an issue while we were there -- more just warnings from friendly locals when we would stop in to restaurants to eat.

Royal Palace:  We made the decision to just view the palace from the outside since the lines were long and we were saving our site-seeing money for the Museo del Prado (hey, you have to budget these things!!).  The view at the gates is free and quite lovely.




Walking Around:  There is plenty to see just walking the main thoroughfares, from popular architecture (like the Metropolis building below) to beautifully preserved homes and cathedrals.


Parque De Retiro:  Definitely stop by the free central park (it's on your way to the Museo Del Prado anyway) for some great views and relaxed strolling.

We had an unfortunately overcast day in Madrid for the Crystal Palace (located within the park) so it was a bit underwhelming.  In sunlight it is supposed to look like a giant crystal (below):

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Museo del Prado and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina (these 2 are must-do's and I'll spend an entire post on them next time so stay tuned!).

Places to Eat:
I have to say Madrid was another city we didn't do too well on food.  Most of the more recommended places to eat from my internet research were well outside of the central (more touristy) part of the city where we stayed, and since we didn't have a car, walking wasn't really an option.  The best food we ate was at a tourist-trapy open market called Mercado De San Miguel.  It's decidedly overpriced and geared towards Westerners that are used to the farmer's market boutique atmosphere, but you can get a great sampling of fresh food and plenty of sangria (at a reasonable price!) here.  If you don't like the smell of fish, you may not like any of the Spanish markets though, because fresh fish are what these places are made for.


Other than this market, we just ate a lot of local bocadillos.  Basically people seem to subsist on these.  You stop in any small/local looking joint and it is all bocadillos all the time.  The bread is hard on the outside, and it is just meat and cheese in between the slices.  My mouth was constantly dry.  I was not a huge fan, but we ate these almost the entire trip because they are very inexpensive.

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Unless you are really adventurous, I also discourage you from trying callos a la madrileno -- a typical dish that you will see on most menus.  This is a beef tripe soup, which for some reason I didn't really know what tripe was but I should have asked because it is stomach lining.  The texture is just what you imagine stomach lining would be like, down to the cilia.  I managed to finish the liquid portion of the stew, but I left all my tripe in the bowl.  For people like myself who like adventure that's easier to swallow, just order patatas bravas.  It's like french fries but in chunks and served like a main course in quantity..  I don't know why we don't have them in America actually!

Mmm patatas bravas are right up there with street churros for best totally unhealthy Spanish food endulgences via

Stay tuned next week for the best of the Madrid art museums -- places you could literally spend the rest of your life inside and still maybe not see everything...