All roads lead to the Puerta del Sol

It's true, actually. The Puerta del Sol is a massive plaza in the middle of Madrid that has roads spiking off of it like the rays of the sun - some of them you drive on, some are just for walking. Puerta del Sol is nicknamed "Spain's belly button." In reality, the real exact center of Spain is about 20 km away, but.... close enough. All carreteras - freeways/highways - start from Puerta del Sol. There's a little plaque saying "0 KM". All directions in Madrid are relative to Puerta del Sol, all streets are numbered according to how close they are to Puerta del Sol, etc, etc, etc.

This statue is of King Carlos III - 1700s - under whose reign Spain began to be recognized as a nation. (also note the massively huge billboard for the new Karate Kid movie - yeaaahhh!)

Puerta del Sol is only one of the cool things in Madrid. For our first day there (yesterday) we did a walking tour as a group of the old part of the city. Things that we passed by, that we will return to see more of later included:

Palacio Real: ---------->

Prado Museum:







We passed a lot of cathedrals and monasteries and other such places, as well as Cervantes' house (the guy who wrote Don Quixote - he's like the backbone of Spain), but I'll post more about them as we actually go to them.




Today Melanie and I explored Alcala. Historically. It was awesome! We discovered an archeology museum right here, 10 minutes away, that has displays from "the beginning of time" clear up through today. It talks a ton about Roman Spain, Celtic Spain, Spain during the Moorish control, during the middle ages, everything! We plan to go back often as we cover these eras in our History/Culture class. (and of course, everything's in Spanish - excellent!) :)

We also found an absolutely lovely cathedral that we want to go in - but we were half an hour late for the tour, so we'll go back.

This whole country is jam-packed with history, architecture, stories, buildings, museums, cathedrals, palaces, everything! We've seen a lot of the current culture - fairs, bowling, shops, etc - now I'm super excited to start learning about the past and all the eras and all the people who have been here before me. I never considered myself a "Europe person" until I started learning about Spain. Now I completely understand the attraction - there is sooo much history here!