Jesus has a boo-boo

February 24th--Today we tried to adapt to the Spanish lifestyle of sleeping in and staying out later. We didn't leave the apartment until about noon to head for the park by the apartment to have a picnic and do some playing. After the park, Austin was forced to take a nap because we knew we were going to be up late. After our siesta, we took the Metro to the Atocha train station. We needed to make some train arrangements for our future travel. That was fairly pain-free, especially since the lady helping us spoke English. That always helps! We then walked from the station to the Prado Museum, one of the world's great art museums. The Prado is free between 6 and 8 p.m. and we decided with 2 kids (who could care less about looking at paintings), 2 hours and free sounded perfect. Free also sounded right within our budget. We followed Rick Steve's walking guide through the museum which allowed us to quickly navigate the 3,000+ canvases and see the true masterpieces. Honestly, we are not "art people" so we had never heard of the artists or their work. However, what we found amazing is that these paintings were done hundreds of years ago. We have a hard time imagining someone in the 21st century doing some of these paintings. Unbelievable! The kids were troopers through the museum. Abby has decided she wants to be an artist and Austin loved the "poo-poo" picture. It was a picture of a naked kid with just a leaf over his privates and Austin thought it was poo-poo. One of our favorite paintings was by Diego Velazquez titled Cristo Crucificado. It was a very life like painting of the crucifixion. When Austin saw it, he said "Jesus has a boo-boo". After that, every time he saw a picture of Jesus (or any man for that matter), he would say "Jesus has a boo-boo". We found the art through the kids eyes much more entertaining then the guide books. After we left the Prado, we walked to another of Rick Steve's recommendations for dinner. It was a quaint little restaurant called La Plateria Bar Museo. We sat at the outside tables in the Plaza de Platerias de Martinez and enjoyed some cheeses, meats and chorizo pasta (along with a little red wine).