Madrid has a lot to see other than museums, of course. This is a the Caixa Forum, an art gallery/performance space designed by Herzog & de Meuron, who also designed the De Young Museum in San Francisco. It is cantilevered impressively, and the greenery next to it is made up of live plants growing on another building's wall.
The public parks in Madrid are wonderful. We did a lot of walking, and you don't have to walk very far to come across a park.
Of course there are still plenty of great museums. This is the lobby of the Thyssen-Bornemisza, where we spent a day (pictures weren't allowed in any of the galleries). Cielo really enjoyed the audio tours, and she had another one here. As she said in her journal, this was like a telephone instead of headphones.
We met a teacher at the Fundacio de Miro in Barcelona who was teaching on a Semester at Sea cruise, and she had already been to Madrid with the group. She said the best thing she had seen on the trip was a flamenco show in Madrid, so we sought one out.
Like everything in Spain, it started late - it started at 10:30pm. It really was a great show. The cast consisted of two guitar players, two singers, and two dancers. They were clearly a tight-knit group and projected an enormous sense of fun from the stage. After the show was clearly at its normal stopping point, the male dancer kept talking the rest of them into "one more", which went on for at least four extra songs.
It was really dark in the club, and despite the loud music, Eero fell fast asleep towards the end. A sound asleep Eero is quite a load to carry the mile or so back to the hotel.
At another one of the big plazas (Plaza Callao), we came across Cines Callao, which was setting up for the big London premiere of the final Harry Potter movie. Above the entrance was a gigantic screen where they projected the red carpet interviews. Cielo and Alison watched this for a while, until the rising tide of fans took over the whole plaza.
The other big museum visit we made was to the Prado. In several places in the museum we saw artists making copies of some of the master works, like this woman.
One of the big attractions at the Prado is its collection of works by Hieronymus Bosch, including the bizarre Garden of Earthly Delights, which it turns out is painted on a wooden triptych, which has painting on both sides, since it was designed to be closeable. The Prado gift shop has numerous Garden of Earthly Delight-themed items, including kids' cereal bowls and jigsaw puzzles.
Outside the Prado, we ran into a building with fuzzy doors.
Another one of Madrid's great parks that we visited was the Parque del Retiro, whose central feature is a big artificial lake.
It also includes this interesting mermaid fountain.
Despite the relative scarcity of cats in Madrid, Cielo had an eye for them, and found these kittens hanging out with a sweet dog.
Another little trip we took was to walk to the Teleferico, a sky lift that goes over several interesting parts of Madrid. On the way, we passed by this enormous statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
We also went past the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple given as a gift to Spain from Egypt after the construction of the Aswan dam. Spain had helped preserve some other temples that would have been flooded by the dam, and Egypt gave Debod to Spain as a thank you.
Here's the temple in the background, as Eero and Cielo go airborne.
Unfortunately we got there just as the telerifico closed. But the park we walked through to get to it, the Parque del Oeste, was really nice, and had great views. We saw at least a dozen different picnics in this one area alone.
And found this interesting statue.
Eero and Cielo, practicing the art of not being seen. Vernon was walking and holding the camera pointed backwards, where the kids didn't notice, to make this movie (this went on for a while).