Museums in Madrid (are sometimes FREE)

One week in March, I made a visit to Spain for eight days. With Madrid as my starting point, I went to Segovia for a day trip (Roman Aqueducts, pretty castle that is said to be one of the castles that inspired the Disney castle), and a three day trip to Cordoba (with the amazing mosque turned cathedral) and Seville (the largest Gothic cathedral, and 30 minutes away by bus the Roman Ruins of Italica, birthplace of emperor Trajan). The rest of the days I stayed in Madrid.

I did not have the most generous budget for the trip, but with careful planning my trip turned out very well and I have nothing to complain. In this post I would like to focus on Madrid and its museums. I took advantage of the many free museum hours, and being a student often means half price tickets. The super big and famous museums like Prado are lovely, but I'd like to talk about some other smaller museums that are just as charming and worth a visit. Please note I did not have a chance to visit all the museums in Madrid, so don't forget to explore other museums that I didn't get to visit, and tell me what you think about them so maybe I'll check them out next time.

I was in Spain! Sneak Peak and Video

For spring break I went to Spain, to be specific, Madrid, Segovia, Cordoba, and Seville. I had planned this trip a while ago and started saving money for it. It was a perfect trip and I had a wonderful time. As a student traveler with limited budget, I took advantage of free museum days and student discount and booking early for good train deals. I will be doing a detailed post on the museums of Spain, and share some tips and fun stories of how I saved money while I traveled, but still had a fantastic time! So do subscribe to my blog so you can be updated when I share more about Spain! But before that, here's a video trailer of my awesome trip, and a few pictures as a sneak peek.

Easiest Strawberry Tart+Video

Hurray! My first baking video!

This strawberry tart is super easy and super fast. It's basically just putting things together. To put in plain terms, this tart is just a store bought crust, vanilla pudding, and lots of strawberries, but put them together, it looks quite fancy! I feel almost a bit guilty revealing how simple my tart is.

Store Bought Crust
Vanilla Pudding Mix. I used two boxes of pudding mix to fill my crust.
Milk for your pudding mix
Strawberries
Jam (optional)

So the instructions are very straight forward here:
1. Have your crust ready.
2. Prep your pudding mix according to instructions. Usually it's just stir with hot milk.
3. Pour slightly chilled pudding mix into crust.
4. Cut your berries and arrange them in a pretty way in to your pudding filled crust.
5. It's optional, but you could brush your berries with some jam, this gives your tart a glossy look.

See my video on how I made my tart!

I made a strawberry rosette for the center of the tart.

Requested by the grad student association whether I could make a dessert for our Valentine's day party, I said yes. Of course I said yes, it's an excuse to make something that's too much for me to finish and a chance to try something new. Since it is spring (more or less) and the season of berries, I decided to make something with strawberries, and red is a good color for Valentine's.

It may be pass Valentines, but a lovely strawberry tart is good for any time!

I've been having lots of academic things to read and write, so I hadn't had enough time to write here. But I do like writing here, so I am trying to update as often as possible! There has been some interesting food/recipe things happening and I'd love to share, so subscribe to this blog if you'd like to know when I update.