Madrid

In Madrid again we had good accommodation for 3 nights in the centre of the city – a small room but clean and very well located. We’d bought a guide to Madrid (although I’d forgotten my Spanish phrasebook), and used it to develop an itinerary. On the first day we walked a long way, taking in the Thyssen-Bornemisza private art gallery which has a wonderful collection amassed by the T-B family over the 20th century. Miss Spain married rather wisely into this family and she then began her own collection. The family sold the collection to the State for a mere song - $350 million dollars – not enough to bail out any financial system. It’s a great collection spanning the entire art world from 1400 onwards – very eclectic. Jack devotedly perused every art work especially the early ones in the collection. I tried to forge ahead to the impressionists and post impressionists. By the time we left I was all art-museumed out.

However we took a break in the huge Parque del Retiro in the middle of Madrid, admiring the beautiful Crystal Palace (which made me think of Oscar and Lucinda and Oscar’s mad enterprise), and munching on a baguette in one of the cafes. Then another culture fix (but less extensive) in the Prado. This time we identified the most important works and rapidly trotted through the museum gazing at them in real tourist style. Two art galleries in one day is a bit much I think but they were in the same part of Madrid.

The next day we took the walking guide to the west though some lovely old parts of Madrid and then to the rather splendid Palaccio Real. We took the tour which was very interesting – it’s a state building used for official events – the king lives elsewhere. The armoury shows the very heavy protective armour worn by Spanish knights. I don’t know how those poor horses carried the weight. Jack was very keen to find El Cid’s sword which turned out to be quite small (although authentic). Things went a bit awry after that. We took a lot of wrong turns and saw a lot of nothing, arriving finally at 3.30 at the Museo Cerralbo which sadly closed at 3 pm.

Tired but hungry we shared a pizza near our hotel., the Petit Palace Londres (sic) which was near the Puerta del Sol with lots of great restaurants and tapas bars that filled up after 9 pm . The food was average but the atmosphere and the architecture was great. We couldn’t subscribe to the Spanish custom of having a very large lunch (because then we’d have to have wine and then we’d be too sleepy to keep up our frenetic devotion to see the sights) and then drinking the night away eating tapas to sustain us (because how would we get up the next morning?) However the locals obviously didn’t take our concerns to heart because, on the morning of of our departure , a strident chorous of happy folk singing Volare (Yes I know it’s an Italian song) woke me at 4 am..

In the restaurants where we had our evening meals, the atmosphere was great and we tried our pathetic Spanish (based on Jack’s three month course in Madrid about 30 years ago, and my dodgy Italian). We resolved to buy another Spanish book before we left for South America.

Saturday morning saw us on Madrid’s very large and cheap Metro en route for the airport. Having been awake since 4 am, I was looking forward to a big sleep on the plane. You can imagine how happy we were to be upgraded to Business Class for the 11 hour flight to Quito.