Dancers everywhere

The second full day in Madrid started with a trip on the Metro.

At the metro station we came across a group of dancers who were happy to pose for photos. We went on to El Rastro - a large flea market, pausing on the way at Puerta de Toldeo where there were some interesting stairs and a large scale group of sundials. It was obvious that the sundials were used by homeless people to sleep in. That gave me the problem of whether to remove them in my photos, but I decided that they should stay as it made more of a statement about the number of homeless in Madrid.

After a trip around the market we headed to the Museo Rein Sofia, which had a long queue to get in, but it did seem to be moving. It was just after 14:30 and the museum had just entered it's free admission period.

We went around 2 exhibitions - Bruce Conner, an interesting 20th century artist, who among other things made many photographic collages, aka Photoshop nowadays. The second was of Picasso works, including Guernica, I hadn't realised before just how large the majority of his works were. We had a quick look at a few Salvador Dalis before the museum closed. Outside in the square was a large crowd, the dancers we had seen at the Metro station looked as though they were preparing to dance. Then after an announcemnt in Spanish it turned out that they were inviting all the spectators to join in for a quick dance lesson. More pictures here.

The day was rounded off with a visit to the Parque del Buen Retiro, where there was a celebratory fireworks display centred around the Monument to Alfonso XII and the pond in front of it. More pictures here. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155240590809356.1073741880.794159355&type=1&l=6d19a8ba48