Fin de Semana

This weekend was a nice, relaxing weekend in Madrid. Soon I'll have my pictures up in Flickr, so you can check them out. (look at the link in the right column of this blog)

On Saturday we made "bocadillos" which are basically Spanish sandwiches. Our bocadillos were pretty simple: bread (celiac or normal) with a Spanish omelette inside. We put everything in a backpack and went to a small chocolate fair inside a shopping center not far from the giant soccer stadium. We thought we could get some chocolate for free but alas, no choco for us.

We then went to "El Retiro" which is a huge park in the center of Madrid. The park is surrounded by pretty iron gates (not the ghetto type, you guys!) and when you are inside, there are plenty of fountains, statues of people I don't know yet but I'm sure Manuel will try to teach me, and a big manmade lake where people can go out on paddleboats.

From El Retiro we walked to my favorite museum, el Museo Reina Sofia (you can see Picasso, Salvador Dali, and more). I love Museo Reina Sofia because it has Pablo Picassos Guernica, among other really cool art. Their temporary exhibitions are usually interesting too, but this one was just plain weird. This painter called Paula Rego has some serious issues, by the looks of what she has painted. I felt like I was in The Shining and I couldn't get out of that exhibition hall fast enough.

I think we left el Museo Reina Sofia around 9pm and walked to the Casa Encendida to watch an ArtFutura documentary on Chiptunes. Basically Chiptunes is a type of techno-like music that is made with old game software (Nintendo, GameBoy, Atari, etc). It was pretty interesting to see that this even exists, although the documentary was way too long. Both of us were falling asleep in the theater.