A Weekend in Madrid

While in Spain, we are committed to exploring Andalucia and other cities within striking distance. Madrid is high on our list of “must see” cities, so last Friday the kids played hooky and we drove there. Our “hotel” turned out to be an apartment overlooking the back of the Museo del Prado, arguably Spain’s most important art museum. It was also just a block away from the Retiro, the Central Park of Madrid. The apartment itself was spacious although a bit worn, but the best part was its two huge garden terraces.

We planned Saturday lunch with one of our classmates from Darden, which left a lot of touring to squeeze into a short amount of time. Tom suggested the open-top red bus tour as a good method to discover the city, so we did that first. Unfortunately, they’ve replaced real guides with recorded audio and we found the kid’s version far more entertaining than the dry adult version. It accomplished the task of orienting us to the city and its key sites, however. For dinner, we went with a traditional tapas experience, standing up outside. The selections were more meat and less seafood based (than Granada) and delicious. In Madrid, everyone seems to speak English fluently and I found that people pretty much responded to me in English whenever I spoke. So we tried having Zoe talk instead and everyone responded to her in Spanish. So they were either being nice, or she is speaking with a nearly native accent.

Saturday morning we headed to the Prado. (Several times we mistakenly referred to it as the Prada, and had people rib us about ending up with expensive designer goods). We opted for the audio tour and despite wanting to limit ourselves to 2 hours, had difficulty leaving. There were so many amazing paintings and let’s just say the red bus tour folks could learn something from the Prado about the elements of an interesting audio tour. Hands down the kid’s loved the Hiernonymous Bosch’s painting, ”The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s such a fanciful and wacky painting that it’s hard to believe it was done in the 1500s…it looks like a Surrealist work. I realize now where Dali got his inspiration.

Then were off to Alfonso and Mercedes’ house for lunch. They entertained us in Argentine style with a wonderful barbeque lunch. Their children attend an English school in Madrid and all the children got along very well. It was such a relaxing and wonderful meal that we were all reluctant to end it and head back to the hotel. Given how late a night we'd had on Friday and the fact that we were still stuffed from lunch, we decided to call it night.

Zoe wanted to visit the Palacio Real and JT the Retiro so we saved both of those for Sunday. Unlike Granada, Madrid does not have siesta and most things are open Sunday. The Palacio Real was amazing…the amount of gold was stunning. I spent so much time admiring the ceiling paintings that my neck was sore the next day. The décor was over the top opulent. Much of it was completed while Spain was at its height of its power. Zoe’s really loved the throne room and exclaimed how easily she could live in that one room alone. Oh if only one could grow up to be a princess!

The activity JT chose was specifically to take a boat ride in the Retiro. Sunday is a very festive day in the park, with many families having picnics. Street performers set up shop near the entrance to the boat pavilion to catch families with children. In addition to musicians, there were puppet shows, magicians, jugglers, and bubble blowers to watch. The boats are wooden row boats, with heavy wooden oars and it was comical and somewhat telling to watch Zoe and JT trying to row in tandem. They started with rowing us in circles and graduated to where they were able to work together quite well, with some frustrating points in between. Despite being a chilly morning, by the time we were on the water it was warm and sunny and when JT was rowing alone, he was sweating from the exertion. Afterwards we all enjoyed an ice cream cone. Unfortunately, it was time to bring the weekend to an end and drive back to Granada.