And the historical tour of Madrid:
First, the post office. This building was absolutely gorgeous! Too bad we don't make our post offices in America as grand as this, it might be a better experience to use them... As described to me by Kyle, the post office was built around 1900 and was a gateway to the outside world. How amazing to be able to communicate with people so far away! I guess they didn't have smart phones back then ;)
I went to a few cathedrals in Madrid, but the photos below were taken of the cathedral next to el Museo del Prado. After a certain hour, attending the museum is actually free, so we got there, realized there was 15 minutes before that time and decided to take a walk for 15 minutes... For some reason, even with all my creative and artistic mind, I have a lot of trouble appreciating "fine art." I LOVED the modern art in NYC's MOMA, but what's the point in seeing hundreds of paintings of royal people standing there? Thomas really wanted the experience of the Prado in Madrid, so we went. And 20 minutes later, we were both done. Bored. I felt so uncultured admitting that I was done, but hey, at least it was free :)
One evening there, Kyle was so excited to show us this Egyptian temple. He kept talking about how hundreds of people would be sitting there, socializing. And how it's all lit up and beautiful. Well, after much walking and several blisters, we made it there at 2am. And the area was empty. No one was there. And the temple wasn't even lit up. He says "I'm sorry! I thought you could've gotten some really cool photos of this, oh shoot." And then I started taking pictures anyway... put a 6 second exposure on there, stabilized it on a wall... and this is what we ended up with. I think it was absolutely beautiful!
