Madrid - the Prado

Tomorrow we are going on another excursion out of town but the train leaves from Chamartin station to the north of the city so today we had to do a test run. The tickets were pre purchased in Australia so we cannot miss the train. At the Metro station we discovered that you need a pre-paid plastic card for public transport. It took a while but eventually we got the card with 10 tickets on it and got to the hub and back again.

This street art was near the Chamartin railway station.

The Prado Museum is actually an art gallery and it houses works from most of the great masters and many of their apprentices. It is huge and I'm  sure you could spend a week there if you wanted to see it all in detail.
We had a 'must see' list and so we saw works by Goya,  Velazquez, el Greco, Heironymous Bosch, Raphael, Caravaggio, Titian and van den Weyden. The depth of the collection is incredible. We saw old favourites such as Fra Angelico, Caravaggio and Tintoretto and also made some new favourites in el Greco, Maino and Licinio.
We spent much more time there than we expected but in the end the extreme air conditioning drove us out. It was a relief to walk out into the sunshine and 32 degrees.

Quite close to our apartment we saw this beautiful vertical garden. With its many shades of green it looks like a painting.

Dinner this evening was in Placa del Angel, only about one minute away from home. It was very pleasant watching the world go by as the sun set and darkness arrived after 10 pm. Walking around after dinner we met Kyle and Brady from our tapas tour and caught up on what we had all seen since then. I guess the central part of Madrid is not so large, even if the population is 3.5 million.