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What a difference a day makes!
We happily abandoned the car and went for public transport while in Madrid. A 2-day pass on metros and buses is only $6 euros which is about the same as a couple of hours parking and a damn sight easier when there’s a stop right outside your hotel. And we have proven to be much better users of public transport than we are drivers (well, in Madrid, anyway) so it was an easy choice.
We hadn’t done a whole lot of homework about Madrid and didn’t really know what there was to do or see, so we started at Madrid’s ground zero, Puerta del Sol, the point from which all road distances are measured. As you would expect it’s a busy (mostly pedestrian) intersection and a major metro hub, with people heading in all directions. It is also home to Madrid’s unique marque - the bear on its hind legs eating from the strawberry tree (we had no idea there was such a thing as a strawberry tree). This symbol appears everywhere, including on the city council coat of arms, but it’s in the Puerto Sol that the original bronze lives.
From
there we entered the Plaza Mayor, a massive arcaded plaza built 400 years ago for housing an open market and show casing jousting tournaments and public hangings! It is also home to the fresco-adorned Casa de la Panaderia - yes, a former bakery but now a theatre. The plaza is home to artists painting in traditional ways, cafes, bars, restaurants, and all manner of souvenirs, novelties and party tricks. But in saying that there’s no Bangkok-like soliciting so you are free to wander about and browse as you like.
It seems that wherever we go we seem to precede a festival of some kind as most of the major public spaces tend to be filled with marquee constructions and the like, making it harder and harder to take those perfect holiday snaps.
We moved on to the glass covered market but we were too early (at midday?) and only half a dozen stalls were open. We followed through the very curved streets, and accompanying houses to the Basilica de San Miguel which was currently showing a wedding. The Basilica is also uniquely curved - we chose to observe basic etiquette and didn’t nosey inside while the wedding was on.
Up the street was another church (if there’s one thing about the Spanish, it is surely that they love their churches and their historical heroes - no matter where you turn there is a church, usually of gargantuan proportions, and a statue of the Don and Cervantes) that housed a Last Supper of note by Vicente Carducho. We were too busy trying to drag Kaspar away from an adoring Spaniard to appreciate the interior!
It was time for lunch but we managed to get through the Plaza de la Villa, the impressive La Almudena Cathedral (even Sarah was impressed, and that’s after saying “seen one cathedral, seen em all”) and settling at Palacio Real which is a total show stopper. With baby in hand and a sizeable queue, we were gladly reduced to appreciate the vast exterior before grabbing a small section of dog-poo free grass to have a bite to eat. Yet another wedding party moved past as we all grazed in the Plaza Oriente in between the Opera House and the Palacio.
We were keen to check out the Monasterio de la Encarnacion to see a real inanimate statue bleeding, but we were out of season
and it was closed…how inconsiderate of St Pantaleon, we had come quite some way!
After this we got a bit waylaid but found our way back to the Puerto del Sol and onto our second walking tour of the day taking in the very opulent and grand, Gran Via, filled with the most ornate Spanish architecture blended (sometimes) with the hustle and bustle of a global capital city. Gabor insisted on a one-off detour to the Museo Municipal. It didn’t sound like much - and incidentally it was closed - but the journey was solely to see the front door. And oh, what an opening it turned out to be!
We ended the day with a visit to the Parque de El Retiro - described as Madrid’s green lung - to wind it down and check out the mausoleum of the Fonz (no, not the Fonz from Happy Days, but Alfonso the XII, believed to be a direct blood relative of Richie Cunningham’s wannabe best friend). Strangely, people pay good hard earned euros to hire row boats and paddle in the stifling heat and squinty glare around this man’s remains.
On the way out of the gardens
we happened upon the Palacio de Cristal (I’m sure you can work out the English equivalent), in one of its more splendid moments of radiant sunshine and subsequent reflective rainbow displays. The camera didn’t really capture how cool this little spectacle was, but imagine a dome upon dome upon dome of crystal with light streaming through it to cast rainbows in every direction - for the younger audiences, something like a naturally lit rave in the middle of the day.
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Nana
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Thank you Gabor!