Leaving Madrid and on to Toledo....

 

 

We left our studio in Madrid, thankful for the comfortable place to stay and its great central location. We had easy access to 2 metro stations and were right in the center of things. It never took us long to get where we wanted to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left for Toledo from Madrid's Estacion de Atocha, the site of the terrible bombings in March 2004 that killed 101 people and injured many more.

The station is home to an indoor palm garden with its very own resident turtles.

 

 

 

 

 

We were pleased to see our Toledo digs, all arranged through the Internet using AirBnB. We are no longer in the big city but in Spain's former capital with thousands of years of history - Roman, Jewish, Visigothic, Moorish, and Christian.

 

The entire city, with 10,000 residents, has been declared a national monument and is so well preserved that the Spanish government has forbidden any modern exteriors.

 

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Sunday in Madrid

 

 

 

 

Leaving our apartment looking forward to a day of varied adventures, we ran right into the Madrid Marathon. Note that I said we ran into it, not in it. It was very festive with lots of people out cheering the runners on. We noticed a strong police presence throughout the city as we encountered the race in various places as we wandered the city.

 

 

 

Puerta del Sol (Gateway of the Sun) - This square is seen as the center of Madrid and was always full of people and activity whenever we walked through it. Today everyone was rocking out to one of the bands out supporting the runners.

 

 

Kilometer 0 marks the center of Spain's road network.

 

 

 

 

Chocolateria San Gines - This is a Madrid institution serving thick hot chocolate with churros 24 hours a day. It got its start in the late 1800's serving workers early on the morning before work. Now it serves those who have partying late onto the night (see example to right).

 

 

 

 

 

After "walking from nowhere through nowhere to nowhere" according to one participant, we ended up at La Casa de Campos, a large urban park with several metro stops. We hopped on a train and headed to Museo Sorolla. It is housed in the Impressionist painter's former studio/mansion and experiencing the gardens, the house and the art was a wonderful way to end our day.

 

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The Paseo del Arte

The amazing collection of art in 3 very different museums amazed and exhausted us over 2 days. They are located within a kilometer of each other with very pleasant tree-lined streets and parks connecting them. The wayfinding through the Prado and the Reina Sofia could be vastly improved - they need the services of the folks who do it for Madrid's metro system - it is much easier to find your way around a city of 4 million people than around either of these museums.

 

One of the delights of European art museums is that they are so often in re-purposed buildings: the Prado was originally built as a natural science museum, the Reina Sofia is a former hospital (on right) and the Thyssenn-Bornemisza was originally a palace. All of course have had fairly recent extensions built making an interesting juxtaposition of old and new.

 

Museo Nacional Del Prado - Madrid's biggest attraction with over 2 million visitors annually. It houses art collected over the centuries by Spanish royalty. The building is huge and we only made it through part of the ground floor which concentrates on the early Flemish, Italian and Spanish collections (primarily 15th century and earlier. Lots left to see another time.

 

 

Reina Sofia - this houses Picasso's Guernica, painted in response to the bombing of the Basque town of Gernika by the Luftwaffe on behalf of Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso had stipulated that it would not be returned to Madrid until Spain had rid itself of fascist rule.

I loved the picture to the right taken from the new part of the museum - overlooking Atocha Train Station and the surrounding neighborhood.

 

Museo Thyssenn-Bornemisza - the newest of the museums (opened in1991) is also the easiest to find your way around. We still only managed to see one floor but the lay out and audio guide were so much coherent when compared to the two other museums. This collection was acquired over two generations of the family for whom it is named, and some think that Spain was the lucky bidder on this collection since the younger Mr. T-B's fifth wife was a former Miss Spain (shown above). The whole story would likely make a great telenovela.

 

 

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Artists - on the metro and in the plazas

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary and a man from the Canary Islands discuss the mechanics of the street performers shown above.

 

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Palacio Real and Catedral de la Almudena

 

 

 

Madrid is quite a fascinating city to wander through - plazas connected by narrow, winding streets/alleys, areas crowded with people to those with few others around, lots of Spanish tourists looking at their maps. We toured the Palacio Real - built in the mid 1700's on the site of the 9th century fortress constructed by Mohammed I of Cordoba. While the current royal family lives in more modest lodgings in the suburbs, it is still used for ceremonial purposes.

 

 

 

 

The palace is surrounded by gardens with many statues - we heard 2 different stories about the statues in the gardens to the east - our waiter told us Queen Isabel had a dream that the statues were going to fall and kill her so ordered them to go in the garden; the guide book seems to think that the palace structurally couldn't support their weight.

 

Santa Maria La Real de la Almudena Cathedral - Directly facing the palace to the south is the cathedral named after the Patroness of Madrid. Evidently in 1085 King Alfonso VI found an image of the Virgin inside the city wall. He named this image Almudena (from the Arabic word "almudaina" that means city wall).

 

 

While the image of the Almudena Virgin dates back to the 16th century, the building of the church began in 1883 but wasn't consecrated until 1933.

 

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Arriving in Madrid

 

 

Easy metro connection from the Barajas Aeropuerto - love that public transportation! We found our studio apartment in the Chueca barrio and walked the neighborhood after a nap.

 

 

One of many neighborhood bars....

....our neighborhood park...

.......column in front of Supreme Court...

......Supreme Court.....

...and a decorated building - a scenic walk close to home on our first day in Madrid.

 

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Spain travel

 

We leave Seattle April 23 and return May 27. We expect to travel mostly in the Andalucian region of Spain except for a week in Madrid and Toledo, and a short trip to the Valencian region to visit old friends. We end our Spanish adventures in Seville where we will attend La Boda Andaluza.

We leave the Pacific Northwest just as spring is in full bloom.

 

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