I arrived in the madrid airport and took the metro downtown, which I found to be amazingly easy. It is the cleanest, fastest AND cheapest subway system I have seen anywhere.
I stayed in a hostel in the Fuencaral area of Madrid which is young and hip (Just like me! Only kidding.), and near the center of the town and the Grand Via, which has a lot of great shopping.
The first night I went out to a random bar in Madrid near the Plaza Mayor and met 2 people from American Express Spain. They were a lot of fun. We were out drinking and dancing until 6 am, and they needed to work at 9 am the next day! The only reason that we went home at 6, is because I was exhausted. They wanted to go out more! I know, weak.
I was also close to Centro-or the center of the city- which made things easy since all the museums are centrally located.
Prado was excelllent. Very nice. The art in the Prado wasn´t to my liking, lots of renaissance and realist representation, but the archetecture is beautiful.
Museo Thissen Bournessema. My favorite museum that I have been to in the world. It is built in a beautiful old palace near the Prado and has -by far- the most security I´ve ever seen in any museum. The museum is hundreds of smaller-sized rooms, and in every room is an attendan (very cute attendants, I might add..) There are also 100+ guards all around the museum. I took a digital photo in one of the first rooms of a Kandinski I really like, with no flash, when the attendant had left the room. I tried it again on a Miro in another room, and a guard came running up to me and told me ¨No foto¨ It was impossible he could have seen me, so they must have ID´d me in the security camera. The rest of the visit to the museum I had attendants watching me carefully as they found out-via earpiece that I was coming...
Besides that, the museum was incredible with a huge collection of expressionist and the first abstract and surrealist works.
The last night I was in Madrid, I was kind of bummed because I hadn´t met anyone I connected with. Despite what you may think, it is not that exciting for me to meet 19 and 20 year old college girls!
I was walking down the street from the laundrymat, and a woman looks me up and down and says, ¨Hey, didn´t you go to Berkeley?¨ Strangely enough, this has happened to me a few times, but all in the Bay Area. Up until now, I always thought it was a weak attempt at a pick up line! Turns out, I must really have a twin at Berkeley. I must meet that hot guy!
The woman (Rachel) went to Berkeley and had been living in Madrid for 3 years. She was a reporter with NBC and had worked in Afganistan, Iraq, and was really interesting as you could imagine.
She took me to a restaurant that was owned by two expats from the USA. It was located in the Centro, and was a really cool little restaurant. One woman was from Wisconsin and the other woman I think was from NY. They were great.
Next stop: Salamanca and Ana´ friends...