Spain - Madrid - First Full Day

Saturday, we awoke fairly early, since we had slept all afternoon Friday, and then pretty much through the whole night. I was dying of thirst, and went out in search of water. The only place that I could find was a Dunkin Donuts (I know, that is pretty lame). Feeling much better with some hydration, we showered and put ourselves together, locked up our main packs to a chair in the room, put on our daypacks, and headed out. The weather was cold and wet, but the rain was just an intermittant drizzle, with an occasional mix of snow flurries. We stopped in a hotel cafeteria for a bit of breakfast, where Vee had a mixto (sandwich of ham and cheese) and I had a pincho de tortilla (spanish omellette). Their spanish omellette is not what I am accustomed to since it was really just a potato pie, which was fine though. The whole meal was 5 euros. After finishing, we walked towards El Prado, and waited maybe 10 minutes in line to get in, and once inside, had to go through the typical security check-in at which point, I understood they wanted to keep my daypack. My computer and video camera were inside the daypack, and I reacted a bit too hastily, rather than trying to negotiate an alternative solution, said no, and left. I was really disappointed, in myself, and in the fact that we were not going to get inside the El Prado museum, which I was really looking forward to. Anyway, we readjusted, and ended up walking up a street that led us to an excellent museum, called Thyssen Bornemisza. It was a fantastic space, and it contained artwork from just about every single artist of note that I could ever think of that had painted since the 16th century. Although the paintings themselves were not the masterpieces from these artists, it was extremely impressive. The collection was privately owned until it was purchased for $300 million and set up as a museum. It took us the entire afternoon to see all of the works. We took a short break, in between the 2nd and 3rd floors, to leave the building for a bit of lunch in another typical cafeteria style place where I had a turkey club, and Vee had a vegetarian sandwich. We pretty much went straight back to the hostale after the Thyssen, and napped until later that evening. Around 11pm or so, we decided to head out for a dessert and wine. We ended up in a quaint little cafe, with tiny little wooden stools, and we each had a glass of the house red, and shared an almond tart and an apple pie. The whoole day, I was feeling really strange, as if I was hungover, probably from the weird schedule, accumulated stress, medications, lack of food and water, etc. We went to bed as soon as we got back to the hostale. I read my book for a bit, "Chasing Matisse", and then quickly fell asleep.