Celebrating

Madrid (Saturday, July 3rd - Monday, July 5th)

Saturday, July 3rd
We have slept well in our little Madrid hostal. It almost feels like a tiny studio apartment. We are on the corner, with two shuttered windows and their little iron balconies, opening up to the streets below on either side. It's a shame to have to leave, but we do. We head out to find something to eat at a local place down on the corner across from the Atocha train station plaza. Then we talk about what to do with the day. It's a lovely sunny day. Yesterday's rain had cleared just as we had arrived into the main train station, so now, we have great weather again.

There are lots of wonderful museums in Madrid and the Reina Sophia (Queen Sophia) is right behind us, across the plaza. So we decide to start there. On the way, we stop at a little visitor information trailer set up outside to pick up brochures about the city. There are some interesting and some bizarre things on exhibit at the museum. This museum is dedicated to modern art. Some of it I like and some I do not and really can't consider art at all. This was a mobile out in the courtyard by someone whose name you'd recognize if I could remember! And another piece outdoors that I liked:

There was another exhibit by an artist, Martin Ramfrez, entitled "Reframing Confinement." With a very limited range of materials and supplies, he created an interesting array of work while incarcerated in a hospital for the insane in California. He had been born in Mexico and left his wife and family to come to this country to find work. He had worked on the railroad for several years, but then was picked up as a drifter and diagnosed with some severe mental illnesses. His work was absolutely fascinating, with a lot of repeating and detailed elements. He spoke very little over the decades, so no one is sure what the various things symbolize.

Many of the other displays were mid-century and I didn't consider them terribly enlightening or worth being on display - a pile of tires? For heaven's sake, we have them all over the South! Rags in a pile? Crumpled up and spray-painted newspaper piled up in a heap - and this is an adult? Come on now. And moving, jangling mobiles of mid-century houseware items? Encased (more like embalmed) items from someone's trashcan? Sorry.

So, when we have enough of this lovely stuff, we go in search of our home for the night before going to see the Botanical Garden a few blocks away for things that are actually beautiful and edifying. Just up the street from where we had breakfast, we find the Hostal San Blas. It is partly under refurbishment, with the interior courtyard having construction equipment and scaffolding in it, but it will do. The room is pretty ugly, but it is not very expensive, seems safe, and we're only sleeping in it. And, we can have it for both nights we have left, so we take it!

As we are walking up King Alfonso XII Boulevard to get to the gates of the Botanical Garden, there is a young lady decorating fans to sell. I am tempted to buy one, but then wonder, what would I really do with it when I get back? I am long past the point of having to have tangible souvenirs of every place I go.

At the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, there's a nice little gift shop, but again, nothing I have to have (or could get back). There's a nice orientation sign to help us - - this place is much larger than the one I'm used to back home. It's laid out rather formally in sections. At least it will be a shady place to explore for a while. There are lots of roses as we seen all along our walk, although it seems that they are beginning to be past their peak. They also have some dahlias that are gorgeous. And some others that I'm not sure if they are dahlias or something else. I first fell in love with dahlias at a floral exhibition on the Insel Mainau on the Bodensee decades ago, but it is hard to grow them in as warm a climate where I live. We find some furry inhabitants of the garden as well, but they are feral and very shy!

It is a large garden and there is a vegetable and herb area as well as flowers, and some more wonderful tree specimens.


The Botanical Garden is set next to a much larger park, the Parque del Retiro, and we decide we will explore that later. It is late in the afternoon as we finish the garden and we hear very lively music coming from somewhere. As we leave the Garden and head up the street, we discover that on this weekend, Madrid is hosting a very big Gay Pride celebration and people are forming up into a parade with lots of buses and flatbeds full of different groups in support of it. There are a lot of sights to behold!

We enjoyed our dinner so much at Cafe Azul that we return there this evening. It's just as good this evening. And we're only a couple of blocks away from our new hostal. We get back in our room and I try to connect to the wifi that we're supposed to have, but it doesn't work. I try to make the little tv work, but it doesn't work either. Oh well. It'll be a quiet evening!



Sunday, July 4th

Of course, Spain doesn't celebrate our Independence Day, but on the Hard Rock Cafe, there is a string of paper flags that encircles their deck eating area, so we have just a touch of the ol' Red, White and Blue this day!

Well, we really wish that we had read the guidebooks closer yesterday. The Prado and other big museums are closed today and tomorrow (Monday), so we will entirely miss them. I gladly would have traded the Reina Sophia for them, if I had only known! But we've heard of the Madrid Vision bus tours with the big, red, double-decker buses. They have the Route 1 (Historical Madrid) and Route 2 (Modern Madrid) tours, and for one price, you can ride all day long and get on and off as many times as your want. We decide this is a great way to spend the day and see the city!

We start with breakfast across the way again. I have to say, I'll be glad to get back to yogurt and juice, too. Everything here is just so heavy compared with what I'm used to! As we walk towards the Vision bus stop, I notice this little pig's head in the window of a meat shop.

For a good while during the day, we ride around, getting a feel for the city, taking first one tour and then the other. That's when we see the Hard Rock Cafe and cheer a little! We are driven through the area where a number of embassys and posh residences are. One home in particular catches my eye. Remember how few squirrels we've noticed? Well it still holds true, even here in Madrid. But this house has a giant - 2' tall? - squirrel as it's chimney pipe in stone or cement. You can't miss it. It's not a new house, probably 1920's, Tudor Revival, storybook quaint in a wealthy kind of way. Perhaps whoever built it was a fan of Squirrel Nutkins.

We get off at one point near one of their department stores. Stella goes shopping for awhile, but I find that I am completely turned off by everything in there. And there really isn't anything I'm looking for anyway. I think they probably have their security cameras turned on me because of the way that I am dressed and look, but that's okay. I go out and wander up and down the street until the appointed time for Stella and I to meet. We hop back on board one of the big red buses and head back to the more historic area up around the royal palace. This area for window shopping or real shopping is much more to my liking than a regular department store. It has local stores with some artisan wares and more traditionally Spanish items. And also more tourist schlock, but you can sort through that. We find a little outdoor restaurant to eat at. We wait and wait and they never decide to serve us. So, we get up and move next door to another place. No problem, we get served just fine and it's a nice meal. Around the corner, we find our requisite afternoon alemandrado blanco in this beautiful little, park-like crescent area.




From here, we walk up to the Royal Palace. It is the largest palace in Europe (the world?) with 18000 rooms or something like that. The royal family doesn't actually live here though! Right now, they are out of the country. Someone does arrive while we are here though in a royal coach. Surprisingly, we are not privy to who it is! There are formal gardens beside the palace that are open for the public to walk through, though they are mostly geometric boxwood parterres with some reflecting pools and are not all that lovely otherwise.

From here, we walk into the shopping area. We find a lovely kitchen store (I love to cook, Stella's not as big on it.) The store is called La Rebleion de los Mandiles, "The Rebellion of the Aprons" and yes, there is a story behind that! It has artisanal products from around Spain and it is also a wine school. I pick up some olive oil to take back with me and an apron (!) for Laura. I enjoy talking with the owner and finding out about their cooking school. Maybe someday I'll come back for that!

We continue down the street and find a sort of arcade of stores on an old plaza. They are fun to explore, but we are getting tired. It's funny. On these days when we haven't walked anywhere near as far as we did on the Camino, we get tired more easily it seems. Perhaps it is a tiredness of all the visual and audio stimulation of the people and the products and the signs and the streetlife. We find a big red bus to carry us back home for the evening. As we ride home, we sit on the top level of the doubledecker. Lights are beginning to come on. Madrid is filled with a wide variety of architectural styles, depending upon the neighborhood.

Once back in 'our' neighborhood, we go to a little Asian restuarant near us for something completely different. It is very good. And nice to not have more than a few doorways to go home. Our next-to-last night in Spain.


Monday, July 5th

It's another gorgeous day and we begin with breakfast in a different little cafe across and down the street. We walk up the pedestrian mall alongside the Botanical Garden and Public Park. It is sort of a flea market for book sellers. They are, of course, mostly in Spanish, but it is interesting to look anyways.

From here, we enter one of the side gates into the very large public park. It feels deep and cool under the large trees. It's sort of like Central Park in NYC, where paths go out in lots of directions - it's hard to know where to head first. We choose a direction off to the left. It takes us to an interesting place. It is an island (almost) with a moat around it, with a path up to the top. There are 192 olive and cypress trees. It is the memorial for the 191 people killed and the 1800 people injured in the bombing of the Atocha train station on March 11, 2004 (and a police officer who died later). We are silent for long moments. It has only been 6 years since this massive tragedy. No wonder everything in the station looks so new. The living trees are a symbol of life ascending amidst the destruction and death. It is called The Forest of Remembrance. There is such peacefulness here. I wonder if any of the family members ever come here, or if they avoid it.

The rest of the park is just beautiful. There are tennis courts in the park and some other recreational areas. There are also a lot of acres of just woods with walking trails and benches. Then there are grassy lawns and sidewalks. People choose to use some of these for sunbathing. There's a large rectangular 'lake' with cafes and refreshment stands. People can rent paddleboats here or feed the waterfowl that congregate. On one side of the lake is a large war memorial to one of the many Alfonsos. Here and there, there are big splashes of color where they have flower plantings around fountains or along walkways. All in all, it's a lovely public space for the people of Madrid (and those of us who come to visit!)


We leave the park and look for a place for lunch. Unfortunately, we don't make a good choice. We end up at a touristy place across from the Prado and the food is not good. We head homeward. Near the hostal is a toy store. I spotted something in the window of the store that I've been looking for for Mom for awhile, so we go inside and I get it. It's a small yellow convertible roadster. She always wanted a real one - I can't do that, and well, she couldn't drive it anyway, but I can get her a little one!

I think that we ought to make a dry run to the airport this afternoon to see how to do it and see how long it takes. So we use the metro and experiment. It's probably a good thing we do. It's a couple of line changes on the metro from Atocha and then it's a long way from the airport metro station to our terminal and gate. It's late by the time we get back to our hostal again and we're tired (again). But we feel like we know what we're doing in the morning, which is good!