{"id":2043,"date":"2018-05-29T12:20:14","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T19:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2019-03-07T10:43:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T18:43:12","slug":"madrid-the-not-so-usual-suspects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/madrid-the-not-so-usual-suspects\/","title":{"rendered":"Madrid \u2013 The Not So Usual Suspects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, lots of parks here as well as squares or plazas and almost all cities have a Plaza de Espana.\u00a0 All the parks and plazas have, usually, a large monument, or an interesting piece of artwork\/sculpture, or they may just have a plaque commemorating something.\u00a0 The monuments are often tall columns with soldiers or horses or both; generals with swords, guys with cannons, you get the picture.\u00a0 Historical stuff.\u00a0 The Spanish love their monuments.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve run into some not so usual things though in these parks and plazas.\u00a0 Not the \u2018Worst Tours\u2019 type of stuff but more just oddball or whimsical.\u00a0 For instance, just north of the royal palace in a nice park is an actual Egyptian temple, the temple of Debod, a 2nd <\/span><\/sup>century BC structure dedicated to the goddess Isis and one of the very few Egyptian works located outside of Egypt.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Temple of Debod<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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On the other side of the city in the El Retiro Park, is a man-made lake, a crystal palace, and the fountain of the fallen angel, the only acknowledged public monument to the Devil.\u00a0 The sculptor, Ricardo Bellver, was inspired by a line in Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In between Debod temple and the devil fountain is a really weird sculpture of another fallen angel.\u00a0 This one is hard to spot and while Bellvers Fallen Angel represents Lucifer, this piece entitled \u2018Air Crash\u2019 is just an angel who has done a face-plant into the top of a 5-story building.\u00a0 Most locals are not even aware it is there.\u00a0 Some popular theories include that it represents Led Zeppelin\u2019s swan song angel.\u00a0 I\u2019m not making this stuff up.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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This monument to King Alfonso XII is located in Buen Retiro Park, overlooking a man made lake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Man made lake in the Buen Retiro Park (“Park of the Pleasant Retreat”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Crystal Palace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Air Crash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Just a short distance from this oddity is a small square at the end of Calle de La Luna, the Plaza de la Luna in which sits a plaque or marker honoring a portal\/gateway to\u2026.I\u2019m not even going to attempt to describe this.\u00a0\u00a0 Here is a quote from the Atlas Obscura on this:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The installation of this marker represented\u00a0the first time the Kcymaerxthaere project has\u00a0been able to honor a gateway to the Umbrasphaere\u2013the connection between all the shadows and darkness on the planet. \u00a0Indeed, the darkest part of one shadow is always related to the darkest part of the next.\u00a0 It also is a wonderful reminder of the way Nobunaga-Ventreven himself was such a connector of disparate parts of Kcymaerxthaere, his commitment to the richness of the world was, in some ways, unparalleled.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

You can see the picture below.\u00a0 I am not making this stuff up.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Back to more normal stuff, a little south of the weirdness is a restaurant we stumbled onto called Sobrino de Botin.\u00a0 Recognized by Guinness as the world\u2019s oldest restaurant still in operation having opened in 1725.\u00a0 Apparently, it gets a mention in Hemmingway\u2019s \u2018The Sun Also Rises\u2019 and the artist Goya supposedly worked there as a lad.\u00a0 Cool stuff abounds, and you won\u2019t find it unless you go walkabout.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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We also spotted a garden growing up the side of a 4-story building.\u00a0 Like, a real garden. Tending to it is probably a real bitch. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We did a little research after finding some of these oddities and found that there are a few more stranger things here, but they are not on the beaten path and a little out of the way.\u00a0 Like the giant Olmec head (as in an Olmec statue from Central America) that sits atop a pyramid in the middle of a traffic circle somewhere in the south part of the city.\u00a0 Or the statue of the \u2018Rocker Grandma\u2019 dedicated to <\/span><\/span>\u00c1ngeles Rodr\u00edguez Hidalgo who at the age of 70, decided to get into the heavy metal rock scene in the 80\u2019s.\u00a0 She became such an icon that she had her own column in the Heavy Rock magazine and was the cover on one of Panzer\u2019s (heavy metal band) albums.\u00a0 I am not making this stuff up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Madrid\u2026we hardly know you!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned, lots of parks here as well as squares or plazas and almost all cities have a Plaza de Espana.\u00a0 All the parks and plazas have, usually, a large monument, or an interesting piece of artwork\/sculpture, or they may just have a plaque commemorating something.\u00a0 The monuments are often tall columns with soldiers or horses or both; generals with swords, guys with cannons, you get the picture.\u00a0 Historical stuff.\u00a0 The Spanish love their monuments. We\u2019ve run into some not so usual things though in these parks and plazas.\u00a0 Not the \u2018Worst Tours\u2019 type of stuff but more just oddball or whimsical.\u00a0 For instance, just north of the royal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4340,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/4340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}