Madrid

Monday, April 15, 2013

Our driver, Paco, drove us to the Barcelona airport at 7:30. A much younger driver, Javier, met us at the Madrid airport, and pointed out the snow on the mountains around Madrid. He felt that it had been very cold in Madrid. We told him about the cold in Minnesota, which left him speechless for a few moments. The weather was sunny and in the 60’s, which felt wonderful to us.

Our friend, Ken, was waiting for us outside our hotel, Petit Palace Londres, in central Madrid. We exchanged hugs with him and, later, Gail, when we got to our room. Their room adjoins ours. We walked to a Museo de Jambon (Museum of Ham, a chain of restaurants) near the Plaza de Puerta del Sol, where I practiced by Spanish by purchasing a couple of ham sandwiches. Abby had stayed in the room to rest a sore knee, so I took a sandwich and a small bottle of water to her. Then Ken, Gail and I walked about a mile to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Even though it’s not the Prado, Thyssen-Bornemisza is a very good museum. There are several Picassos, including Man with a Clarinet, Harlequin with a Mirror, and Bullfight. There’s a very funny Marc Chagall painting entitled, “The Cock,” which depicts a young woman riding a horse-sized rooster with her arms wrapped lovingly around its neck. There is also a Rembrandt self-portrait, but my favorite is

the Hans Holbein of Henry VIII which is on the cover of a biography that I have read. I thanked Ken and Gail very sincerely for finding this jewel of a museum, less than a mile away, that we could visit on our first day in Madrid.

At 8:00 p.m. we met our guide, Alonso, in the hotel lobby for walking tapas tour, sampling local tapas specialties. Alonso is slim, six feet tall, about 40, and has two children ages 6 and 3. He has dark hair, thinning on top. His father was a professional diplomat for the Spanish government who had been stationed for a while in the United States when Alonso was a child, so his English is very good. Our first stop was Casa Labra, the oldest bar in Madrid, dating from 1860, where we had tapas of marinated tuna and also cod mixed with a creamy cheese and deep fried.

Our next stop was a roofed, open-air market – Mercado San Miguel, which Fodor’s calls a “gourmet nirvana” – that specializes in tapas. At stalls within the market, you can buy single portions of either tapas or beverages, and then stroll around the market to find other things to sample. It’s perfect for a tourist or Madrileno who is looking for either lighter fare or appetizers and drinks before a meal. My favorite was the salt cod on small pieces of toast with a tomato relish on top. We also ate a tuna jerky on toast that was not everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed it.

Our last stop was Lhardy, a tapas bar founded as a restaurant in 1839. (You can look it up on line.) Here we had a sit-down meal that consisted of various dishes to share. We started with a very small cup of consommé that was delicious. My favorite

dish was slices of octopus and potato with a very tasty sauce. The waiter also brought some Iberica ham that was out of this world – much, much better than anything found at the Museo de Jambon, for example. Our last dish before dessert was a vegetable tart that was possibly the best way ever devised to eat zucchini, onion and eggplant. We ended with a dessert of “fried milk,” little clusters of sweet, creamy cheese that had been deep-fried. Alonso walked us back to our hotel where we sank into our beds in contented sleep.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

We met Christina in the hotel lobby at 9:30 for our guided walking tour of the old quarter of Madrid and the Prado Museum. Christina is in her early 50’s, with short, dark hair that is turning grey. To our surprise she had an American accent. She had been born in Paris to Spanish Civil War refugees. At the age of two her family had moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, were her father had taught physics at the University of Virginia until she reached the age of 14, when they moved back to Europe. She had been in the advertising business for 22 years before switching to guiding tours just over nine years ago. She has a degree in history and was a perfect guide because of her deep knowledge and love of Spanish history. With her American accent, she was easily understandable.

It’s difficult to summarize our walking tour of the old quarter. What came through the strongest was Christina’s love of Spanish history and her distaste for the victorious Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. We walked past many churches and medieval buildings on our way to the Royal Palace, which Christina said was definitely worth an extended visit later in our stay. In the Plaza Mayor, we were approached by a group of high school students, all of them boys, who had been assigned to practice their English on unsuspecting tourists. Two of them read from a prepared script as we answered their questions. We told them that we liked Madrid and would like to return again some day for a visit. Christina, who had separated from us to get some maps of the old quarter, rushed over, fearing they were pick-pockets. When she saw their age, she knew we were okay.

From the Plaza Mayor, the five of us took two cabs to the Prado Museum, which is ranked along with

the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as one of the best art museums in the world. Although its collection of masterpieces by Rubens, Rafael and the Dutch masters (including Rembrandt) is amazing, its forte is Spanish artists such as Goya, El Greco and Velasquez. Christina spent some time on all of these, except for El Greco, which she said we would see plenty of in Toledo.

Christina took us first to the Annunciation of the Virgin by Fra Angelico. She explained that it was painted on wood in tempura paint, and had neither the oil-based paint nor the sense of perspective that characterized later, Renaissance painting. Nevertheless, the colors were vibrant and Fra Angelico had attempted to make the painting life-like. Our next stop was Descent from the Cross (ca. 1435) by Roger van der Weyden. This is an example of the early use of oil paints, which allowed more vibrant colors than the tempura paints of the Fra Angelico period. The setting was the removal of Jesus’ body from the cross, but the characters were dressed in the costumes of wealthy 15th-century Flemish merchants. Thus the painting would appeal to the wealthy art patrons of the period, at least those in Flanders.

We then moved on to Tintoretto’s Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet, with its elegant sense of perspective; the Garden of Earthly Delights by Heironymous Bosch; and the Three Muses by Rubens; finishing with Las Meninas by Velazquez and the Third of May by Goya. We looked at many other masterpieces in El Prado’s collection, and it is impossible to summarize them all.

After temporarily departing El Prado, we took a taxi to our lunch reservation at a nearby restaurant. Abby and I then took a taxi back to our hotel for a siesta, while Ken and Gail walked around Madrid and visited some mercados (open-air markets). At 5:45 we re-grouped again at El Prado for a visit with El Greco, Rembrandt, Raphael, and certain other masters that we had missed in the early afternoon.

After bidding farewell to El Prado, we walked into Parque del Buen Retiro (the Good Retreat) where we found a café where we could sit and watch couples in love rowing boats on a small pond. Highly-sculpted cypress trees guarded a set of steps leading up to the pond. A clown in a rowboat entertained the other rowers, at least those who could be distracted from their girlfriends and boyfriends in the boats. We felt like characters in a French Impressionist painting.

We walked to La Cesta, a restaurant just a half-mile away, where we had the best meal so far in Spain. I had braised ox tail, Ken had grilled squid, Abby had duck meatballs and Gail had a large salad, all of them accompanied by first courses of scallops, asparagus and salmon. Abby and I took a taxi back to our hotel near Puerta del Sol, while Ken and Gail walked back. A perfect end to a perfect day! Tomorrow, the medieval capital - Toledo.