The weather has forsaken us.....

After an almost blemish-free honeymoon, Madrid has brought the fine weather to a grinding halt. It has rained non-stop since we arrived. Fortunately though, Madrid's main attractions are indoors, in the form of three art museums.

Today's turn was to visit the Museo Nacional Del Prado which is considered to have one of the finest collections in the world.

To be honest though, I found the place quite boring compared to the previous day with most paintings either being about Jesus or of biblical origin and of kings. Carolyn disagreed with me though saying that this was much more interesting and that the paintings were "real" paintings. While I can appreciate the workmanship behind the paintings, Picasso's and Dali's work is much more intriguing, in my mind at least!

Following on from Museo del Prado, we ended up at another museum of sorts, Museo del Jamon or Museum of Ham! This was possibly the most amusing lunch I have ever had, for 8 euros ($16 AUD) we had a 3 course lunch with bread and a glass of wine. What made it amusing I guess was that the unassuming frontage had a restaurant that seated about 150 people upstairs which was packed with elderly locals, it was like eating in 1959. This was a good sign of sorts, if the locals are here, then it must be OK mustn't it?

After some very dodgy meals in Seville, I was a bit dubious, but fortunately the food was surprisingly good with a nice Paella entree which was a meal in itself, followed by roast chicken with the only vegetable seemingly available in Spain, potatoes, chipped and fried of course. The decoration of the place was pink neon with ham hanging over almost ever free inch of wall space. Traveling through Spain, we have seen a very diverse country of different lifestyles and even languages, but there is one thing that seems to unite them, their love of pig.

The meal was enough to fill us through for the rest of the day, a brisk walk down the Gran Via. The rain didn't make for great photographic opportunities, but i did get one in looking back up Gran Via.