Day 8 (Madrid to Barcelona): November 10, 2016

Day 8 (Madrid to Barcelona):

Since we had nothing planned today, we slept late and got out of bed around 9 AM.

View from our Hotel Room

We had breakfast downstairs and then came back to the room and packed up.  We finally motivated around 12:15 PM and walked over to the Prado museum.  The Prado was very impressive with a sizable collection.  In my mind, the highlight was the painting by Velasquez entitled Las Meninas.  I had learned about this work in my Art History class in college and it was nice to see it in person finally.  There were also a couple of other works from Goya that I had learned about.  We stayed at the Prado until 3 PM and then took a cab back to the hotel to get our bags.  On the way to the Prado earlier in the day, we had seen a Japanese restaurant so we decided to pick up some lunch (noodle dish) and bring it with us to the train station.  When we got to the train station, we found a “table” and stood while we ate our noodle lunch.  We then boarded the 3 hour train ride to Barcelona.  During the ride, the people behind us talked the whole time and other people’s phones were going off none stop during the ride.  We had Wifi, so I listened to music most of the time.  When we got to the Barcelona train station, we grabbed a cab and went to the hotel (Hotel H10 Cubik).  We arrived at the hotel around 7:30 PM.  It was nice to be in one hotel for the next few nights so we could finally settle in.  Hannah met us at the hotel at 8 PM and then we took a cab to a restaurant that Hannah had eaten at before.  We were the only ones there but the food was good.  We had a number of different Tapa’s (Chicken/Potato Croquettes, Hummus, grilled chicken, bread with tomatoes and garlic, spicy potatoes).  I had a beer and split a pitcher of Sangria.  After dinner, Hannah took the bus home and we took a cab.  We got back to the hotel at 10:30 PM.