Hello,
I went into the center yesterday with a few of the students I've kept in contact from the course, Raymundo, Elena and Maria. We walked around quite a bit and saw some of the major sites that I haven't seen yet. We went to the Palacio Real in the Plaza Oriente where the royal family used to live but now is open for tours. We didn't go in but had a walk through the plaza and took a few pictures. My camera somehow got a crack on the screen when I took it out yesterday and about half the screen is messed up so I wasn't sure if the pictures would turn out or not, but they turned out fine, I just didn't take that great of pictures. Then we walked to a nearby cathedral called the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Almudena. It one of the more modern cathedrals and the biggest in Madrid. We went inside and walked around looking at the amazing architecture and murals, and a huge organ which someone was playing. Then we walked on up the street to the Parque Oeste and saw the Egyptian temple with water around it but it was closed. Afterwards, we sat down at a cafe to get out of the heat for a while before walking down Gran Via towards the Plaza Mayor. This is the main Plaza in Madrid built in early 1600's where they hold many festivities and has shops all around it now. One side of it is covered in paintings and a huge statue of Philip III in the middle. We continued on towards the Prado museum which is free on Sundays so the masses are in line to go at once. Its impossible to see everything there in a day, and I had about enough of the Renaissance paintings as I could handle. It holds many from the most famous Spanish painters like Velazquez, El Greco, and Goya. A lot of them were paintings of royal families and portraits from 17th and 18th century. There were a lot of massive and very beautiful religious scenes with styles like those of the Italian Renaissance painters . It was mostly interesting to hear some of the history behind them and of the royal families which Maria told us about. That was about all the walking we could handle so we called it a day.