Day 2 in Madrid: Laundromat, Guernica, and Mercado San Miguel

Pictures: (1): Laundromat, (2), (3), & (4): Mercado San Miguel, (5): Picasso's Guernica at Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, (6): Desert before dinner back at Mercado San Miguel

After a failed attempt at doing laundry in our sink, two day at the beach in Barcelona, eating in lots of smokey restaurants, and almost two weeks of travel, we decided it was time to do wash in a laundromat. We finally found one and with the help of some of the locals who were also doing wash, cleaned all of our clothes. After that we decided to try to get breakfast (although it was a little after 12 now) at this indoor market near Plaza Mayor and our hotel. They have fresh fish, fruit, coffee, pastries and desert, bread, lots of ham, cheese and wine stands. Alison got a huge pastry and I got two little prosciutto sandwiches and we both got coffee. The ham guy making the sandwiches was cutting the meat right off of a huge pigs leg and onto the bread (see picture of pigs legs hanging above this stand).

We walked the royal palace after lunch only to find out that it was closed to the public for the day for a ceremony or wedding or something. Since it was pretty cold and overcast, we didn't want to go to the park and since it was Monday, there were only a couple of sights that were open. The royal palace was down, so the only other thing to see was the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, a modem art museum. Some of the pictures were interesting, but some were a little out there. One picture we saw, for example, was literally a one half inch black brush stroke on an otherwise blank canvas. My theory is that the artist starting painting the picture but stopped immediately and after he died collectors found it and assumed it was finished art. That's the only explanation I can come up with. The most famous painting is Picassos Guernica. He painted it after he heard about the Nazi bombing of the little Spanish town Guernica to test out their new air fleet (Franco let them do it). I took a picture (above) right after the lady told me no pictures even without flash. Woops.

After that we went to go shopping when it started pouring out. We went in a few stores then came back to the hotel for a bit. We wanted to have desert at Mercado San Miguel but since it closes at 10pm, we decided to have desert first. For dinner, we went to a Wok place that we had walked past the day before and got edamame and pad Thai which was very good.