Madrid - Thursday October 9, 2014

This morning after breakfast we headed to the Reina Sofia Museum.  The museum which opened in 1992 houses mostly 20th century art, including many works of Pablo Picasso, Salvatore Dali, among others.  The art is quite different from what we saw yesterday at the Prado, but yet very inspiring.  The most famous piece of art housed here is Picasso's "Guernica".  We spent several hours here and then visited the Atocha train station which is directly across the street from the museum. The train station is the largest and primary train station serving Madrid.  It was a very interesting building and also houses a large tropical garden.  After leaving the area by the museum and train station we walked to the El Botin Restaurant for lunch.  This restaurant is supposedly the oldest restaurant in the world according to Guinness Book of records and one of the top ten restaurants in the world according to Forbes Magazine.  Gail and I had a lovely lunch, dessert and a bottle of wine.  Gail had shrimp in garlic sauce and I had the house specialty, Roast Suckling Pig.  Both entrees were extremely  delicious and the best food we have had so far in Spain.  After lunch we walked around a bit, stopped in a specialty guitar/music store, and browsed a few other shops before it started to rain. The rain put a damper on our walking and we returned to the hotel for a bit of rest and to escape the downpour.  After the rain stops we plan on walking around a bit more and perhaps sitting at an outside Tapas bar for a snack and some sangria.