When we’ve stayed in the central areas of the bigger cities, it’s been interesting in the morning to open the windows and listen to the sounds of the city and people and feel the day getting started. The most interesting sound though is the birds. In Jerez, Lisbon, Porto, and Madrid you hear a lot of squawking and chirping. Some of this comes from caged birds in windows but most is just regular birds. It’s surprising and not what we expected in the middle of downtown. It’s very pleasant. All I ever heard in Richmond was seagulls and crows. On our last day here, Sunday, just outside our window, we were treated to a morning serenade of Pachelbel’s Canon, some Vivaldi, Bach, and Albinoni. The cellist and violinist were amazing!
So, the usual stuff. Where we were staying was easy walking distance to most of the ‘important’ tourist things but after this much time on the road, there is less of an urge to rush out and do those ‘tours’. We take our time now getting out after a leisurely breakfast and cup of coffee. We pick a direction to wander and eventually see most of what we need to but if we don’t, we can always come back. We had a week and no particular plan, so we just followed the guide map, found some of those tourist things and some not so tourist things.
There are some world class museums and art galleries here and as such, Madrid feels like the large European city that it is. There is no central castle, Moorish or otherwise, no roman bridges, and no major gothic cathedral that would be the main event like some of the other cities. There are castles for sure and some very spectacular ones at that, but they are on the outskirts, and we weren’t walking over to see them.
As for the galleries, we saw two out of the three, the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia. We missed the biggie, the Prado, but as an American tourist said, we’re a bit “museum’d out”! I’m not that into art galleries but it was nice to see some of the greats, Picasso, Goya, Da Vinci, Dali, Magritte, Renoir, Monet, and Van Gogh. It was a special treat to see ‘Guernica’, Picasso’s anti-war mural, which google says is the last great European painting of the 20th century. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but Teresa got one anyway just before the guard came to scold us.
We also checked out a center for ‘cultural’ art. Some interesting stuff but for me this just a fancy name for graffiti but hey, what do I know. Teresa’s the artist.
We wandered through the Cerralbo Museum which was some 19th century Marquis’ Italian themed mansion stuffed to the gills with baroque furniture, art, statues, and enough knicky-knacks to make your eyes crossed. It did have some nifty samurai armour and weapons which was housed in the ‘arab’ room. Go figure. Oh, and a real nice pool table. If you want to see how the rich lived, check it out here.
http://www.mecd.gob.es/mcerralbo/en/home.html
The walks took us past the other big things to see here, namely the Royal Palace, La Almudena Cathedral, and the Basilica of San Francisco. The palace is huge, and I can’t imagine just 2 people living there but I suppose that’s what you do when you are King and Queen. You and the 10,000 servants. We didn’t go in, mainly I think because we’re tired of seeing room after room of vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, family portraits, and big-assed furniture we can’t afford. Maybe we’re just palace’d out?
The Cathedral was nice though and similar in design to the one in Santiago. We thought the crypt under the church was architecturally even better than the main part. Very beautiful. Apparently, we are not cathedral’d out just yet.
One of the good things about turning 65 (well Teresa turned 65, me, I’ve got a looooong way to go hahahahaha) is that many of the galleries and museums are either a reduced fee or free. So, we send Teresa ahead to ask for 2 seniors tickets, they don’t believe her, she shows them her passport, they nod their heads, look at me and just print up 2 tickets. I’m so insulted I don’t get asked for ID! Anyway, it’s been a good deal!
Lastly, in between all the ‘stuff’, we stopped at a few parks. Madrid is nicely laid out with very large green spaces and gardens surrounding the city center, some with man-made lakes and all with monuments of one sort or another. Vancouver could learn a thing or two about green space.
