Day 2: Museums

My planned post for today was our Tapas Crawl, but I’ve decided that Spain’s food deserves its own post, so I’m going to hold off writing about that.

Trust me when I say there was no shortage of “delish” on this tour!

Instead, I’m going to use today’s post to talk about something Dave and I have really started to enjoy doing when we travel: seeing museums.

We knew they have dinosaurs. Everything else would be gravy

The big museum in Madrid is centered around art, which doesn’t really appeal to either of us, but we discovered Madrid also has a natural Science museum, so that’s where we spent most of our afternoon.

One of the museum’s most interesting areas. It has original furniture from several hundred years ago, when the museum first opened

This particular museum has a whole lot of taxidermy, which really isn’t something I enjoy very much. But, they did have a photo exhibit where I would have spent an hour if Dave had let me.

Cute pictures of animals!!

The exhibit is put on by National Geographic. Joel Sartore has spent the last 10 years taking photos of the world’s rarest and most endangered animals. He said it “The Photo Ark”. It’s absolutely amazing.

Seeing these beautiful creatures in the wild last year was life changing
Wolves are found on nearly every continent. They are adaptable and at the top of the food chain. Unfortunately, many species of wolves have been driven to near extinction by humans and human activity
Panda numbers are on the rise…. This proves that we CAN make positive change and help these animals before it’s too late!
Sartore does an incredible job of capturing their eyes. I couldn’t look away from this sweet animal
The curiosity here…
If this picture doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what could.

The museum also had an excellent exhibition about human evolution and some dinosaur displays as well. What I enjoyed most about the section on evolution was the artifacts they had showing the evolution of human abilities. Early forms of jewellery, weapons, clothing and tools were displayed, and they even had a special display showing the time in our history where humans became so intelligent that mourning rituals began being performed.

In university, I took a class on all the things historians have learned just by studying death and rituals surrounding it. It’s fascinating stuff.

All in all, I wouldn’t say Madrid’s natural Science museum is the best I’ve seen (the one in Ottawa might be my favourite), but it was a great way to spend a cold and rainy afternoon. And now there’s a new photographer for me to follow on social media. His work is incredible and I encourage you to check out his website here.

The artist, being “attacked” by his subject

We have 1 more day in Madrid left to enjoy before we begin the first leg of our road trip, so stay tuned!!

3 thoughts on “Day 2: Museums”

  1. Roadtrip woohoo!!
    These animals are CUTE!!!
    I’m like you, more of a natural history museum person than an art museum/gallery person.
    Botanical gardens are another place I go to when I’m visiting a new city. Plants are literally AWEsome!

    Reply

    1. Yup! I also love Botanical gardens! Xiamen has the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. Montreal also has beautiful gardens that are culturally themed. You can experience properly done gardens from all around the world there

      Reply

Leave a Reply