General observations: We could not really define a typical looking Madrileno. There was great variety in hair and skin color. If you didn’t know where you were, you’d have a hard time knowing whether you were in downtown Chicago or Madrid based on the people. Spain does have one of the highest immigration rates in Europe with about 10% of the population being immigrants. The two major immigrant origins are Latin America and Eastern Europe.
The people dressed much as in the U.S. although perhaps not as sloppy and perhaps more stylish. We did see a few “goths” in one plaza - i.e., spike hair, all black clothes, spiked leather clothes, and body piercing.
One of things that impressed us the most was just the number of people walking. The streets were generally full of people going about their business.
So many people smoke in Spain and Madrid - maybe 50%. There is a public education campaign against smoking but it’s not very high profile. Of course, tobacco products can only be sold through government owned stores called “estancos” that also sell stamps. Fortunately we could eat in non-smoking sections in restaurants.
We saw a lot of police. They were usually on motorcycles and sharply dressed with black pants and a fluorescent yellow top with a wide gray horizontal stripe. We also saw a lot of street cleaners - men in yellow attire with “Limpiaza” or “cleaner” on their back. They swept up trash in the plazas, metro stations, and public places, and we really didn’t see very much trash in the areas we went. But when we came back on the bus from Toledo or took the shuttle to the airport, there was a fair amount of litter on the side of the road.
The cars were generally smaller than in the U.S. but the traffic was as bad as U.S. cities. We did see many more motorcycles than in the U.S. and a lot of motor scooters.
We also some “working girls” occasionally. They were young women in hot pants or short skirt typically standing outside “sex shops” of which we saw a few.
We saw a lot of McDonalds restaurants as well as Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, and even a Subway and TGI Fridays. We wanted to eat at a McDonalds in order to be able to say that we ate at one in Madrid but the cheapest hamburger was about $7. So we didn’t.
Several people said that we didn’t need to bring much cash and that everyone accepts credit cards in Europe. That was true at hotels and major stores, but it was certainly not true at smaller shops, bakeries, and museums.
There were a few street people. One very heavy black women was always sitting on the sidewalk at the corner of our hotel building with her back up against the building. She was there in morning when we went out, she was there when we came back in early afternoon, and she was there when we returned in the early evening. She was even sitting there unprotected in the rain one morning. It seemed like she never moved. She was pretty obese so she was obviously getting plenty to eat. On one of the side streets of the Gran Via, there were several street people with their dogs and sleeping bags. Sometimes they’d just be sitting on the sidewalk playing cards. In early morning, there were several people sleeping next to buildings. On Wednesday morning when we walked to the Egyptian temple, we started to take a street underpass beneath a wide busy street. We walked down some stairs from a park and turned the corner to go under the street and there was a regular little village of street people sleeping. They had hung up blankets to provide some privacy. We quickly retraced our steps and took another route. Altogether, we may have seen a total of 25 or so street people so not that many all things considered.
By the way, we didn’t send any postcards back because it would have cost $1.20 plus the cost of the postcard.
Wednesday, May 16: We left Knoxville the morning of May 16 and changed planes in Cincinnati and New York JFK. We got to the Delta check-in and had the entire UT baseball team in front of us with all of their equipment bags. So it took us a long time to check in. Unfortunately, there were storms in New York City area so our plane was delayed by three hours leaving Cincinnati. We were very worried about missing our flight out of New York’s JFK airport. Fortunately, our flight out of NY was delayed as well. The pilots were able to make up some time going to NY but our arrival gate was about as far away as possible from our departure gate in the next concourse. We walked as fast as we could and just made it to our gate as they started boarding. We were sure our luggage wouldn’t make it with us but the flight was delayed after we boarded and so the luggage did get on board.
We finally left NY about 10 PM. Leaving NY there were about six large ships anchored offshore outside of NY harbor in parallel spaced about 1/4 mile apart with all their lights on. It was an interesting scene and they were presumably waiting to come into port the next day. It wasn’t until after midnight before we had eaten dinner, all the plates were picked up and the cabin lights turned out so that we could try to sleep. We only had about 3 ½ or 4 hours to try before we would land in Madrid which is 6 hours ahead of Knoxville time. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. (Based on the planes navigation display, we were cruising speed at about 35,000 ft going about 530 mph.) About two hours out of Madrid the sun came up but the ocean was cloud covered so there was nothing to see. The clouds broke up as we approached the NW tip of Spain. This was a hilly region with many little white villages. Nearly all the ridge tops were lined with wind generators. The land looked well developed with roads, freeways, and rail lines as well as many dams and reservoirs. As we neared Madrid, there was more flat cultivated land and lots of construction around Madrid. We landed about 10 A.M.
Thursday, May 17, Madrid: The Madrid airport appeared antiquated but was undergoing some renovations. We headed down to customs. We just kept following the crowd but there were occasionally some signs in English that helped. There were separate sets of lines for citizens of the European community and everyone else. The custom inspector looked at our passports and the form that we had filled out and stamped our passports. Unfortunately, we didn’t stop to exchange our currency after picking up our luggage since we were afraid we might miss the shuttle. That had consequences later. The shuttle ride into Madrid was like any U.S. city but even more graffiti along the way and traffic was terrible. There were also some political posters since an election was upcoming. We could actually read some of signs in Spanish. There were just apartment buildings on the way in - no single family residential areas. We got to the hotel and checked in. The clerks spoke perfect English but I tried a little Spanish - “¿Tiene un mapa de Madrid?” (Do you have a map of Madrid?) - and he gave us a couple of maps! Cool! The hotel room was a little smaller than a standard U.S. motel room but the bathroom was good size and very nice - large dark green stone tiles and a shower with swinging glass doors. We did have one problem. We couldn’t get the lights to work so Janis called the front desk. We found out that we had to put the magnetic door lock card in a slot on the wall to activate the lights. The room did have a small balcony about two feet wide with a nice view to the right of Madrid but with a building directly across.
We crashed and slept for about two hours. After we woke up, we showered and walked down the Gran Via towards the Museo del Prado. It was after 4 PM so the Bank of Spain and other banks were closed so we couldn’t exchange our currency. We went back to our hotel and decided to eat at a restaurant called Nebraskas. It was actually a good restaurant. We had a nice conversation with the waiter who spoke English with a British accent. He had visited the U.S. and we were to find that many Spaniards had visited the U.S. We did have some confusion over the tip. In the U.S., the credit card bill has a line to designate a tip but there is no way to leave a tip via the credit card bill in Spain. Tips are strictly cash transactions so we had to leave him a tip in U.S. dollars since we had no Euro currency.
Friday, May 18, Madrid: We slept until about 8 AM and then got up and had the hotel’s breakfast buffet. The breakfast buffet was very good and we ate there every day. Typically a slice of ham, a small banana, two peach halves, a small carton of strawberry yogurt, orange juice, scramble eggs, a powdered sugar sweet role, and a little two-inch square pastry with a dollop of chocolate inside and chocolate sprinkles on top. We ate so well at breakfast that most days we ate only a light lunch and supper.
Friday was a day when all the public art museums and other museums were free so we walked down to the Museo del Prado which is one of the oldest museums in Europe having been established in1819. On the way to the Prado we kept looking for a bank where we could exchange our currency but we didn’t see any obvious banks.
We got to the museum about 9:30 since that’s when it was supposed to open. There was already a long line of people from around the world. And as usually happens when we go to museums and aquariums on vacation, big groups of grade school students descended. We did have some confusion whether we needed to get tickets before we stood in line. The people ahead of us in line looked Indian and so Janis guessed that they could speak English. They could and so Janis verified that we were in the right line. Several special groups got to go in ahead of us and then the museum started letting in bunches of people at a time so as not to overwhelm the first few museum galleries. We finally went in after about a ½ hour wait. We did have to show ID’s and send purses and bags through an x-ray screener.
The Museo del Prado was very large with many paintings (retrados) by famous Spanish masters such as Valazquez, Goya, El Greco (he was actually originally from Crete), and others. We were surprised and pleased that with some effort we could read about half of Spanish on the little placards next to the paintings describing them. Many of the paintings were of religious themes such as Christ’s crucifixion, the apostles, etc. It wasn’t until a later period that non-religious themes became common. The exhibits also included two famous paintings by Goya of a reclining woman which were done for a rich man at a time when you had to be careful of nude figures. So he had one painting done with the woman clothed and one nude. When someone was coming to visit who would object, he just switched paintings. There were so many paintings in the museum that after a couple of hours they all began to look the same and we were getting tired. We hurried through the last few galleries.
After the Prado we walked up a street hoping to find a bank again and finally saw a Deutsche Bank. When we entered we realized that it wasn’t a commercial bank but rather was an investment bank. Janis was able to communicate enough to the person behind the counter who didn’t speak English but who realized we wanted to exchange currency - “cambia.” So we exchanged about $60.
From Deutsche bank we walked over to El Parque de Buen Retiro which is just east of the Prado. This famous park is very large - perhaps on the order of Central Park. We walked up one of the promenades that had a large lawn edged in red flowers separating two parallel paths which in turn were lined with trees and bronze busts of famous persons. We walked a few hundred feet up to a small lake edged with concrete steps and which had a monument to a king on the other side. There were a few rowboats on the lake that you could rent but I wasn’t willing to row Janis around the lake in one. We stopped at one of several refreshment stands in the park and wanted to buy a coke from a vending machine. But it only took coins and all we had were paper euros, €s. Janis had the courage to ask a clerk inside to give her change. The clerk said “digame” (speak to me) which is a common phrase that we heard frequently. We each bought a bottle of coke and sat at one of the umbrella shaded tables to enjoy. From there we walked over to the much photographed crystal palace which is a large, tall pavilion made out of panes of glass set into a white painted steel framework . It sits next to a small pond and was very pretty. It looked like it usually had flowers and plants inside but it was being renovated although we were allowed to enter to see it from the inside. The park overall was very nice and we wish we could have returned before we left Madrid to explore it some more. It had a lot of nice walking lanes, trees, and open lawns and lots of people were enjoying it.
We walked from the park over to the Puerta Acala which is a traffic circle with a large three arched monument in the middle. Kind of like a small version of the Arch de Triumph. We took some pictures and Janis commented that the warriors atop the monument looked like Marvin the Martian from Bugs Bunny cartoons.
We next walked over to the Plaza Mayor which is centuries old and very famous. We didn’t spend much time there since we planned to come back to it another day.
We went back to the hotel and decided to try to find a restaurant called Barracas that Samantha Brown ate at on her Travel Channel show. She recommended the paella which is a Spanish rice dish with saffron, vegetables, and meat that is made in a large flat bottomed pan. The hotel front desk helped us locate it on a map and it was close to the hotel. The hotel also had tickets waiting for us for a package tour to Toledo for Monday. It took us two trips down to the travel agency and a call from the hotel staff to get them but we finally got them. We walked over to the Barracas and found that it didn’t open until 8:30. It is not unusual to open much later than U.S. restaurants. There were two other American couples inspecting the menu and we chatted with them for a couple of minutes. Since it was only about 5:30 we walked around for awhile and went back to a bakery we had seen the night before. We couldn’t buy anything that previous night since we didn’t have any euros and she didn’t accept credit cards. But this time we had euros and we each bought a chocolate filled pastry with chocolate sprinkles on top. The pastry was only about two €s and I paid with a five € note. In the U.S., we are used to getting dollar bills back when we have more than one dollar of change coming. I expected to get some euro notes back in this case but she handed me a handful of change. I looked at her and said excuse me with a “you short changed me” look and tone. It took a few seconds to realize that she had given me one and two € coins which are much more commonly used instead of notes. It was embarrassing. But we walked up the street to a small plaza to enjoy our pastry. There was lots of activity there including people just sitting and talking and couples with kids playing. There was also a group of “goths” on one side of the plaza - black clothes, spike hair, leather with studs, etc. A group of security people came over and checked their ID’s and then chatted good naturedly with them for awhile.
We went back to Baraccas at 8:30 and were lucky to get in without reservations since it is a very popular place probably especially so on Friday. We ordered paella even though supposedly only tourists have it as an evening meal. Our paella had chicken, large shrimp, pork, haddock, and squid. The squid was surprisingly good. It was tender and not rubbery at all. But it was a lot of food. After the tip it was about $70 so that was our special meal for the trip and for Janis’s birthday. Our waiter could speak English and gave us a tour of a back room with pictures of famous American movie stars who had eaten there. We said we liked Madrid but he said we wouldn’t like it as well if we had to live there. Too crowded and hectic.
Saturday, May 19, Madrid: Saturday was Janis’s birthday. We got up and had the breakfast buffet at the hotel again and left about 10 AM to go to the Plaza Mayor, Atocha Station, and the Museo Reina Sofia. There was already a lot of people out when walked to the Plaza Mayor SE of the hotel. The streets on the way were quite narrow, about 20-30 feet wide and lined with 4-5 story buildings. The ground floor was shops and the upper floors residences. On the outside, the Plaza Mayor just looks like another row of buildings but then you get a glimpse through an archway at the end of a short narrow alley and see a sunny open court. There are about eight such entrances. The plaza itself is a large square paved with cobblestones and is about a football field long and wide. Shops again line the ground floor but are set back perhaps 10 feet under the upper stories with a series of stone columns supporting the upper floors. You can walk in the shade and out of the elements as you do your shopping. The Plaza Mayor is very famous and historically significant. Many important events in Spanish history occurred here as well as public executions. It must have always been a rich persons place to live and the residences must be very expensive even now. There were a lot of restaurants, souvenir shops and upscale shops such as coin collectors, clothing, etc.
We walked from Plaza Mayor down to Atocha Railway station which was built in the early 1900's and was one of largest in Europe. It was on one of the lines going into Atocha station where Al Quaeda attacked a couple of years ago. They didn’t attack the station itself but commuter trains coming into the station. Our purpose was mainly to scout out where we needed to go in order to catch our train to Toledo on Monday. The inside of the station was a huge open vaulted space with skylights. It was mostly planted in palm trees, banana plants, and other tropical vegetation. It looked like a jungle with winding concrete sidewalks through it. To keep the plants happy there were galvanized iron pipes about 10 feet tall spaced about every 20 feet which sent out a mist and made it very humid. It was delightfully not humid outside but somewhat uncomfortably humid inside. The station also has a large subway stop and many shops. We found where our train would leave two levels up.
From the station we went to the Museo Reina Sofia. This art museum specializes more in modern art whereas the Prado was old masters. We thought it would be free admission based on one person’s advice but free admission wasn’t until 2:30 so we begrudgingly paid about 12 €s ($17). The building is a big square with a large courtyard in the middle. The galleries were on the 2nd and 4th floors which were accessed by two sets of modern glass enclosed elevators attached to the building’s outside. The second floor had paintings by Picasso, Dali, Miro and others. All famous modern artists. Included was Picasso’s very famous painting titled Guernica which portrayed the bombing of Guernica village by Franco’s forces during the Spanish civil war in the late 1930's. (By the way, we didn’t see or hear any references to Franco while in Madrid except for photos in the Reina Sofia of sandbagged buildings and artillery damage in Madrid.) The 4th floor was later modern and abstract art that didn’t really appeal to us. It didn’t seem much like art.
That Saturday evening we explored the salon and terrace on the top (9th) floor of our hotel. The salon consisted of several nice rooms with sofas, chairs and coffee tables where you could sit and read the newspapers. There wasn’t anyone in the salon and just an Indian couple on the terrace which was a small outdoor patio with about six tables and an awning for shade. We stopped at the small bar where Carmen, a young single Spanish girl, tended the bar and served the salon and terrace by herself. She spoke a little English so between her English and our very poor Spanish we could converse a little. She asked “¿Cómo estan? ¿Bien?” (How are you? OK?) And we said “bien. ¿Y tú?” (Ok, and you?) She said “bien” and then something in Spanish about how she’d rather be out walking rather than working. Janis said “caminamos toda dia” (we have walked all day). I was able to ask “¿tiene vino?” (do you have wine?) And she said “Sí, vino tinto, blanco, and rosado” (yes, red wine, white and rose). We asked for the vino blanco and went to sit on the terrace while she brought the wine. The temperature was perfect and not humid. We stood at the white cement balustrade at the edge of the terrace and looked out at the view of the city to the right. We could see the low buildings, many with balconies and terra cotta roof tiles, of the that part of the city stretching into the distance and the mountains beyond. The hostess brought out two glasses and filled them from a bottle and had also brought a bowl of potato chips, some olives, and pickles. We sat for about a ½ hour just relaxing and enjoying ourselves. When we were done we took our glasses and bowls in from the terrace and set them on the bar. Carmen came out from the back room and was surprised but appreciative that we had brought things in. I said “ayudamos” (we are helping) and she understood and laughed. I didn’t understand what she said next but it was evident that she was asking for our room number to charge the wine to. I said “siete once” (seven eleven) and she wrote it down and repeated seven eleven in English to confirm. I said “nos gusta el vino. Cual es el nombre de vino” (we like the wine. What is its name?). It was neat to be able to actually say some things in Spanish that were intelligible. She brought out the bottle and I wrote down the name Herederos del Marques de Riscal Rauda. (Unfortunately we couldn’t find it in Knoxville.) We asked if the wine was from Spain and looked at the bottle and saw it was. I laid two €s on the counter as a tip and said “para ti” (for you). She must not get many tips since she seemed very appreciative. In fact she brought out a small bottle of the wine we liked and gave it to us. Janis said it was her birthday (cumpleaños) and we understood her to say “ah, un regalo para tu cumpleaños” (ah, a gift for your birthday). There was a picture of Goya’s clothed nude model so we talked briefly about the Museo del Prado. (By the way, the two glasses of wine cost us about $8 but the next time we came she didn’t charge us anything which was very nice.)
We left the hotel and looked for a pastry shop. We went down the side street on the northwest side of the hotel and walked through another small plaza which was completely concrete and where a lot of small kids were kicking a soccer ball and families were just sitting. We walked past a Chinese restaurant in an area that looked like a very small Chinatown. We crossed the Gran Via which is the main street in front of our hotel and walked down another small street. We saw a little restaurant called Valor specializing in chocolate and saw that they offered hot chocolate con churros. We had been wanting to try this Spanish treat and so sat down at an outside table and each ordered a hot chocolate and also a plate of churros for both of us. It came in about five minutes and was a coffee cup size of hot chocolate and about eight churros each about nine inches long. The hot chocolate was hot and very thick - almost a loose pudding. It’s easier to use a spoon rather than drinking it. The churros were a long role of fried sweet dough about one inch in diameter. They tasted similar to funnel cakes. We dipped the churros in the chocolate to eat them. They were so good.
We walked around a little more. There were so many people on the street. It’s obvious that not very many people sit inside and watch TV. There are of course a lot of people living in the area which explains why there are so many people. Although most of the people were younger than 40, there were a good number of older people too. The streets were so full of people that it was hard to walk. We went into one department store called El Corte de Inglese (the English court). This was a very large, nice upscale store, e.g., they had 200-300 € ($270-$400) watches for sale. The store traffic was terrific - the envy of any Knoxville store and was like the busiest Christmas shopping day.
Sunday, May 20, Madrid: After breakfast at the hotel, we walked over to the Palacio Real (royal palace) about 10 AM. We got a little lost along the way since the many small streets are often poorly marked - just a little one foot by eight inch or so ceramic tile on the side of the closest building and which can be anywhere from the ground floor to a couple of stories up and can be right at the corner of the building or back a few dozen feet or nowhere at all. The streets also go every which way and there can be five or more streets at an intersection. We took the wrong turn at one of these and then it’s easy to loose what direction you are going. But at least we got to see some nice back streets and small plazas. The palace itself was built in the early 1700's on a bluff overlooking western Madrid. We bought two English guided tour tickets for 9 €s ($12.50) apiece. It was starting to sprinkle as we walked across the huge stone tile and cobblestone courtyard from the ticket office to the tour meeting place. There was a tall iron fence on the end opposite the palace which is also across from a large cathedral, the royal armory is on another side, the ticket office, gift shop, and royal pharmacy on another side and then the palace itself on the last side. The tour took a little over one hour and we had a nice guide who spoke English very well but with a pretty good Spanish accent. The guests in the old days would enter where we entered but would enter in coaches driven right into the palace itself which had a carriage passageway through it. Then the guests would ascend a huge staircase made to impress visitors. The current king (Juan Carlos) and queen (Sofia) only use the palace for official state functions. When Franco took over in about 1938, the royal family left the country but when Franco died in 1978 and Spain became a democracy again, the king and queen were brought back and are somewhat like the English royal family. However, they were never formally crowned and out of respect never sit on the two identical thrones and never wear the crowns. The palace had separate rooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner functions. The dinner banquet room was huge and the long table is shortened or lengthened depending on the number of guests - up to 150. All the chairs were identical except that the fifth chair down on each side was just a few inches taller. These chairs are where the king and queen sit on opposite sides. We also saw the throne room which had lots of mirrors, saw a room with all the walls and ceiling made of porcelain, the royal silverware and dish collection, a collection of instruments including a Stradivarius, and much more.
From the Palace we walked down to the Puerta de Toledo which is another traffic circle with another three arch monument. There was a shopping mall nearby that we visited. It was nice but not a lot in it of interest so walked back up to the Plaza Mayor.
We went back to the hotel and then went out later to explore the Metro which is the Madrid subway. We got a little instruction from the hotel desk. The Metro is a very extensive system and easy to use once one knows how. We went down the steps into the Metro station and saw a bank of ticket machines. It was confusing how to use them but we saw one machine that said to use exact change. So we each put in a one € coin and got a Metro ticket. We had a Metro map which helped and took the line down to Atocha station. It was very much like any other subway system although you did need to lift a little latch to get your door to open at a station. It was a smooth ride and we went a little farther than Atocha station and then came back. After returning from the Metro, we went to a pastry shop near the hotel to indulge ourselves again. Pasty was obviously one of our favorite parts of the trip since it’s hard to find good pastry in Knoxville.
Monday, May 21, Madrid & Toledo: Monday was the day for our package tour to Toledo. We were supposed to meet someone at the Atocha railroad station between 8:30 and 9 AM. We took the Metro to Atocha station which only took about ten minutes and got there about 8:20. We went through security which wasn’t too stringent. You just showed your ticket and put purses, cameras, luggage, bags, etc. on an X-ray machine conveyor. There wasn’t any metal detector to walk though. The terminal was nice and was similar to an airplane terminal although not as many people nor as many shops. The train side of the terminal was a wall of glass windows through which you could see the escalators from each gate down to the train platforms. At 9:10 an announcement said we could board our train so we did. We walked through sliding glass doors where an agent tore off our ticket stub and went down an escalator to the train platform. Our ticket said coach 4 and each coach had a little electronic sign giving its coach number. We climbed the steps into the coach and found our seats which were similar to airplane seats but with more leg room. The coach was very nice and looked brand new and the upholstery was immaculately clean. The train left exactly on time (and got to Toledo exactly on time) and the ride was very smooth. The AVE train is a high speed train that can get up to 200 km/hr but the trip to Toledo is so short that it doesn’t have time to get up to a high speed. The land is fairly flat between Madrid and Toledo and we saw some olive groves and even some cornfields as well as other fields of dense green short plants that we didn’t recognize but could have been wheat or some other cereal. The soil was dark brown like the U.S. mid-west in some places and lighter brown elsewhere with noticeable amounts of stones. The soil also looked shallow in a few places. We saw a couple of old stone buildings but that was it. Most of the buildings were similar to what you would see in the rural U.S.
We met someone from the travel agency at the Toledo station and followed him through the railroad station which was a beautiful new building with a Moorish design influence. He gave us instructions for meeting our tour bus. Apparently most people take the tour bus from Madrid to Toledo but the travel agency offers the train option and we were the only ones to take it. We talked for just a couple of minutes and we expressed our admiration for the train. He was surprised when we said the U.S. doesn’t have anything like the Spanish and European train system. He said “you mean you can go to the moon but don’t have a good train system?” which we found amusing but true. He then left us and took the train back to Madrid.
We met our bus and drove up to old Toledo. It was a narrow, winding road along the shallow gorge of the Tagus River (Rio Tajo in Spanish). Toledo was a Roman fort and then a medieval fortress town and also the capital of Moorish Spain for awhile. It was built on a hill surrounded on three sides by the river which made a natural defense since the any invader would have go down a steep slope to the river about 200 feet below, cross the maybe 50 foot wide river, and then scale the slope on the other side. We had a great view of Toledo from the bluff across from it. We could see the old fort on top called the Alcazar, the old stone walls surrounding the old city, the large gothic cathedral, a smaller older cathedral, and a couple of old stone arch bridges.
The bus crossed the river on a modern bridge into old Toledo and dropped us off. We followed our tour guide for what seemed like forever through the narrow, winding streets of Toledo - all of which seemed to be going uphill. Several streets had a long canvas slung above down the middle of the street. These are the streets that once a year a huge a gold and silver icon about 10 feet tall is paraded through. It’s a big event.
Our tour group stopped first at the tomb of the Count of Orgaz who was famous for being a good nobleman. Then we went to one of the oldest synagogues in Europe and the oldest in Spain. It was built during the Moorish period in a Moorish style with lots of rows of columns inside. The Jews had been in Spain for 15 centuries until Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Columbus fame told the Jews in 1492 that they had two choices - convert to Christianity or leave Spain. About half converted and half left. The synagogue was converted into a church but today is not used for religious purposes but is a world heritage site. We also visited the home of El Greco which had a very nice garden and courtyard. He was a famous Spanish painter of the late 1500's and early 1600's. He was called El Greco because he originally came from Crete but lived his last few decades in Toledo. There was a small gallery of his paintings that we toured.
We met the tour bus which took us to an artisan factory where they made inlaid gold and silver jewelry - demasque. The technique was brought to Spain by the Moors. The artisans cut intricate designs into steel and then hammer in gold and silver filagree to make lovely jewelry. But it all seemed like a tourist trap since they soon hustled us from watching the artisans into their shop and made a strong sales pitch. From the factory we went to a restaurant for lunch and sat at a table with three other couples - one couple from Argentina, one from Spain, and one from Ecuador who now live in Orlando, Florida and were the only ones that spoke English. But talk about a small world, this couple from Ecuador had a child that lived in Knoxville, TN. It didn’t take long for the dinner conversation to get to George Bush once they knew that we were from the U.S. As far as we could tell, the couple from Argentina said they had traveled around the world but would not visit the U.S. while Bush was still president. Fortunately they didn’t hold it against us personally.
After lunch we toured one of the largest gothic cathedrals in Spain. It was so beautiful. Lots of carved marble and hardwood, displays of lavish clergy robes, a room full of gold and silver objects, and jewels, and a beautiful bible illuminated with gold and silver paint. And then it was back to the bus to return to Madrid.
We got back to Madrid about 5:30 and then went out again about 7 PM to El Corte de Inglese where Janis bought some Kleenex at the supermercado (supermarket). The box was printed in about 15 languages and was made by Kimberly-Clark and the box said it was made in either Britain or Spain. The supermercado was a nice grocery store - smaller than most U.S. supermarkets but carrying a wide variety of brands and items including a nice wine selection some of which were only about $4.00 and supposedly good wine. Most people in the supermercado bought just a few items rather than stocking up like in the U.S. We also went to the cheese and pastry shop behind our hotel and both of us bought a “pestilu” which is an eau clair and cost about $1.25 each. We ate them in the small plaza nearby. They were so good although all the pigeons made us a bit nervous. They would walk very close eying us hoping to get some crumbs. At the other plaza the other day someone threw a few crumbs out and pigeons started swooping down from all the buildings surrounding the plaza. It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Tuesday, May 22, Madrid: We got up around 7:30 and “carbed up” at the breakfast buffet again and left the hotel about 9:30. It was cool (62oF) and cloudy so a long sleeve knit shirt felt good. We walked down the Gran Via a little ways and then cut north to see some other neighborhoods which again were quite picturesque. We walked over to the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library) thinking we could find and use some internet computers there. But the receptionist who spoke at least French, English and Spanish said that people usually use the branch libraries for this. She gave us a list of branches but they were just addresses and we didn’t have a good enough map to find them.
We walked down the Paseo del Prado and stopped at the Spanish Naval Museum which was free admission. We did have to show an ID and go through a metal detector to get in. It was a very nice and interesting museum with many ship models from the 1400's era to modern. There were also lots of artifacts such as canons, sextants, amphora, swords, muskets, rifles, dueling pistols sets (still in their original boxes showing all the accessories like rammers, cleaners, musket ball dies, etc.), the oldest surviving known document from Columbus after discovering America, a facsimile of the document signed by the pope dividing the world between Spain and Portugal, wall sized paintings of naval battles, old globes and maps including the oldest known map in Europe showing North America (you can make out Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico), models of harbors and naval ports/armories, and more. One of the globes from 1600 was about four feet in diameter and was amazingly accurate although not perfect of course. Many of the models of sailing ships were huge and just beautiful. They were about six feet long and high with all the rigging and sails and had such detail. The 1900's era warships were just as detailed though made of metal and what looked like a plastic resin. Interestingly, all the descriptions were only in Spanish which we could mostly make out. But there was one exhibit that was in both Spanish and English. That exhibit was the model of the U.S. Maine which included several large diagrams explaining how the explosion was most likely due to coal dust and not a Spanish plot.
We left the Naval Museum and continued walking down the Paseo del Prado to take pictures of the Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofia. From there we walked up the Calle Atocha (Atocha Street) to Plaza Mayor again since there were supposed to be some jewelry stores with silvers jewelry near one entrance. There indeed were about six such shops but they were very high end. For one shop you had to push a buzzer to be let in. So we passed them up but we did find a place nearby that had “trufas” - truffles - about the size of golf balls which were a thick chocolate mousse covered with chocolate sprinkles. They were soooo! good. Fortunately we walked about 8-10 miles per day so we burned off the calories. When we got back to the hotel the maid was cleaning our room so we went up to the top floor salons and sat and leafed through a newspaper called “El Mundo’ - The World. It was all in Spanish and our vocabulary was insufficient to read much of it.
Later, we went out to buy Janis two handbags for seven €s each. The bags said “Madrid” all over them and one was for her and one for her mom.
About 6 PM we went out to find something to eat. We thought it would be neat to say we ate a hamburger at McDonalds in Madrid which was just up the Gran Via a little ways but the cheapest hamburger was 5 €s or about $7. That was a little too expensive a novelty for us. So we bought a spinach filled pastry for about 1.60 €s at the bakery we first went to in Madrid. It was very good. Then about 7:30 we went over to El Corte del Inglese and bought three small truffles which very good too. Half way to El Corte we got caught in a real good thunderstorm with a real good downpour, lightning, and wind.
Back in our room we watched an interesting 45 minute Spanish game show on the Tele Madrid channel. It had four players and was based partly on their knowledge of the Madrid Metro system. Each player started at one end of a Metro line and advanced up the Metro based on correctly answering questions about the Metro stops and also answering trivia about a variety of things. The next day we watched a different game show where two contestants vied to make the longest word out of a series of random letters given to them or to try to make simple equations using a set of random numbers that would then equal another given random number. A little more brainy than U.S. game shows.
Wednesday, May 23, Madrid: It was raining and cool (63oF) in the morning but the rain let up a little so we left about 9:15 and walked up the Gran Via towards the Plaza de España northwest of the hotel. (It was on the way there that we encountered the street person city discussed earlier.) There was a park there and a large monument to Cervantes with bronze statues at the base of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. We next walked over to the Parque de la Montaña where there were sections of an Egyptian temple called Templo de Debod. It was a gift to Spain from Egypt because of Spain’s help in saving ancient Egyptian sites that would have been inundated by the Aswan High Dam. The park was about a ½ mile in size and was on top of a low hill. The park had lots of mature shade trees and broad paths. On the west side of the park was a great view of western Madrid and the Palacio Real sitting on the bluff farther south.
We walked back over to the Gran Via whose name changed to Calle de La Princesa somewhere and then up to Calle Alberto Alguilera which is a wide avenue with many nice apartment buildings and shops. It started to rain harder and we were glad we brought our umbrellas and jackets. We walked down a side street to Plaza del Dos de Mayo which wasn’t much but it did have several cleaners pressure washing signs and cleaning the plaza. We walked down the Calle de Fuencarral to the Gran Via and back to the hotel. When we walked into he hotel I saw one of the desk clerks and said “mojado” (wet) and he chuckled and said “sí, muy mojado” (yes, very wet).
The rain let up again so we decided to try to go to the Real Jardin Botanico (Royal Botanical Garden) about noon. The entry fee was only 2 € apiece which was cheap compared to other places. We walked around the perimeter of the gardens and then zig-zagged down and back through each set of gardens in order to see everything. The gardens were laid out in about four parallel rows of gardens with about eight square smaller gardens in each row. Each square garden was planted with different plants, e.g., irises, roses, herbs, etc. with trees planted between the gardens. Unfortunately, only the roses and some irises and alyssum were in bloom but it was still very nice. From the gardens we walked up Calle de Las Huertas to the Plaza Mayor hoping to have some more churros with chocolate. But the shop wanted 4 € each ($5.60) and so we decided to go back up towards the hotel to Valor’s where we had some before. But they were closed for siesta. So we settled for pastry again at the shop near the hotel.
About 5:30 we went over to the supermercado at the El Corte de Inglese and bought some turkey lunch meat, a loaf of whole wheat bread, sliced cheese, leaf spinach, and a candy bar for about $8.60. The supermercado had fabulous looking vegetables - mushrooms already sliced and all neatly lined up in rows in the package, small artichokes also all lined up in rows in the package. All the vegetables looked so clean and fresh. They also had a large selection of fish and meat. Janis paid by credit card and was given a choice of prices in euros or dollars. Interestingly, the places that take credit cards require a photo ID but will take either a passport or a U.S. drivers license. We went back to the hotel and made ourselves a sandwich.
Thursday, May 24: We got up early in order to have breakfast when the buffet opened at 7:30 so that we could catch the 8:00 AM shuttle to the airport. We also took a few photos of the hotel and the Gran Via before breakfast. We went through airport security and then did some shopping in the duty free zone in the gate area. We bought some Spanish chocolates for some friends, a Madrid picture book, and an inlaid necklace from Toledo for the girl that picked up our mail and watered our flowers. It was raining in Madrid but the plane took off with no problems. Unfortunately, there was cloud cover most of the way until we got south of Newfoundland. Our flights had no problems we made it back home about 11 PM.
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