The Farthest Away From Home I've Ever Been

Into Portugal! We spent a few days in Porto, getting to grips with the Portuguese atmosphere, and checking out various museums, cafes/restaurants and parks/plazas. Central Porto is incredibly beautiful and scenic. On the first day we climbed up an old church spite called Torre dos Clérigos, which looked down onto the surrounding city, with the Atlantic Ocean off in the distance. We checked out the Portuguese Centre of Photography, which is a gallery and museum set in an old prison, and close by is a famous book store called Livraria Lello, and claims to be a source of inspiration for J. K. Rowling when writing Harry Potter. The Soares dos Reis National Museum featured classical paintings and sculptures by Portuguese artists, with a nice courtyard in the centre of the building. After spending the first part of the day there we went to the nearby Garden of the Crystal Palace, and checked out the Museo Romantico, a house museum formerly lived in by Carlos Alberto of Savoy, ...

The last few days in Madrid were spent at the Riena Sofia and the Thyssen-Bornemisza galleries. The Reina Sofia is home to Picasso’s Guernica, which was powerful and dominated the room it was hung in. There were plenty of other works which I enjoyed but specifically Dali’s The Endless Enigma was a highlight. The Thyssen-Bornemisza was the third amazing museum in Madrid, and had prices by Monet, Van Gogh, Dali, El Greco, Rembrandt, Renoir, and O’Keeffe. The temporary exhibit was interesting, showing paintings by Joaquín Sorolla alongside many of the garments featured in the painting. On to Salamanca, we spent a couple days enjoying the sights and foods the university city had to offer. A climb up to the top of Catedral de Salamanca gave impressive views of the city. There was also an Art Nouveau & Art Deco Museum inside a beautiful mansion called Casa Lis. The last couple days in Spain (before we head down into Portugal) were spent in Galacian region, in a city called V...

On Sunday we went to the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas for a bullfight. There were 3 matadors, each with their own picadores and banderilleros. Each matador fights two bulls for a total of 6 fights. Although there was a lot of tradition and theatrics, it’s still basically bullying a cow to death, so not something that needs to be experienced more than once. The next day we spent the whole afternoon at the Museo Nacional Del Prado, which is considered one of the greatest art museums, and the most impressive collections of European art, in the world. It would have taken multiple visits to fully appreciate all of the works on display, but the highlights of the collection were Heironymus Bosch, El Greco, Goya, Velázquez, Titian, and Rubens. Sadly the Museum is very strict on taking photos of paintings but there were some people who found a loophole... On Tuesday we checked out the Royal Palace of Madrid. One of the largest palaces in Europe, it has the Sabatini Gardens on on...