Pascua en Madrid

Is there a better way to spend the long Easter Weekend but to visit Spains capital: Madrid?
Nope :)
Comparing all the options how to get to Madrid I came to the conclusion that taking the plane (oneway) would be the cheapest and fastest one: ~ 50€
Leaving Barcelona at 11 am, 23° ... arriving in Madrid: shower and 11°. I better should have missed my flight.
Luckily a few days before we left, we found a guy, Carlos, on couchsurfing.com who offered to host us for the entire 3 days.
For the ones who don't know what couchsurfing is:
It's a network for travelers, where you can send "couchrequests" if you go somewhere and need a place to stay. In return you offer your couch for free to other travelers.
And when you are lucky, you get free acommodation and meet cool local people who can show you around.
That's how lucky we were :)

So we spent the next 3 days in Madrid.
Madrid is quite nice and the center can easily be explored walking. The old town's a maze of many tiny crooked streets hidden behind grandiose historical building and cathedrals.
Cafés and tapas bars everywhere.
The challenge of the weekend was to fight the growing lack of sleep and force ourselves to get up and do, at least some sightseeing...which can be hard if you spend all night dancing and clubbing until 7am!

Parque del Rito

Saturday was by far the best and sunniest day and after doing some sightseeing: Puerta del Sol, Plaza España, Palacio Real y Almudena Catedral, we made use of the good weather, bought bread, salmon and guacamole and had picnic in el Parque del Retiro.

Picnic

Linda and our 2 hosts Carlos y Chimo

Strolling around and enjoying the relaxed spanish way of life, this is how we spent the rest of the day.
Coming back to Carlos place, hungry and tired, they were already awaiting us, to go out and celebrate Carlos Birthday, which was Sunday.
Well, that's what we did...it was a fun night, although Linda can't  remember it anymore.
Dinner, the spanish way, at 11:30pm.

Huevos rotos, Tapas

Sunday we slept in til 1pm, but didn't miss a thing. 
It was pouring buckets :(
But nevertheless we managed to pull ourselves together and made it to El Museo de la Reina Sofia, where one of Picassos most famous pictures " Guernica" is exhibited. Picasso painted it in response to the bombing of Guernica, a small village in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes. 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide, standing in front of it, it's impressive and depressing at the same time. It shows the tragedies of war and the suffering of particularly innocent civilians.