Madrid (1/30/07)

1-30-07 Madrid

Well my gosh where did I leave off, ahh yes our lovely train ride from Bilbao to Madrid, and I mean lovely…yeah…. While the actual ride was quite pretty, we soon grew quite tired of the train when the ride that was supposed to be 3 hrs turned into 12!!! Apparently some snow had fallen blocking us between Bilbao and Palencia, so we waited…and waited…and waited… the time for our next connection came and… we just waited some more.

Eventually we made it to Palencia, but not before one of the crazy old Spanish guys in our car decided it was time to break out into song… no I am not kidding, and yes it was actually quite good, but when everyone clapped, it convinced him that he should do it again… and again…and again… does anyone else see a pattern with this trip? Don’t get me wrong, he was a cute old guy, but he just kicked that dead horse one too many times.

Once we actually made it to Madrid, we jumped on the metro, baggage in tow (FUN!!), and made a switch midway to finally get to the stop near our hostal. Well let me tell you, this hostel was lovely, couldn’t find it from the street, filled with british high school students, they cancelled our room 30 min before we got there (damn snow!!!), and now we were put in a giant room filled with 4 twins (beds not people) and no heat! Oh and they informed us that we would have to hang around the hostal until noon the next day so they could figure out where to put us.

YAY!!! We get to move again, well at least it was only up a street or 2. This place seemed a bit quieter (little did we know). Our room reeked of smoke and the shared bath was with around 12 other rooms….awkward. Anyway so we finally made it out of the room and explored the surrounding area. We also went to the Museo de Prado, it was quite interesting but not my cup of tea. I enjoyed the Valezquez and the Goya pieces the most, along with the Ruebens and the Van Dykes… those crazy Dutch guys…as Jeannie says, if they are not painting about sex its death… ho well at least it makes for an interesting subject. The rest were rather unremarkable, but it certainly was a good museum.

The following day we had a great time wandering and exploring. First off were some delicious croissants and juice as always, then we went to the museo de Reina Sofia and its expansion by Jean Nouvel. The museum was really cool, I enjoyed the cubism more than Jeannie, but she got to see some surrealistic photography, so she was more than content. We both agree that their temporary exhibition of early art in film… well sucked. I have had my fill of flickering tvs and scratchy audio loops for quite a while… I an can appreciate what they were going for, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The Expansion was really nice, actually much nicer than I though it was going to be when I saw it under construction a couple years ago. The courtyard space was a little breezy but what isn’t this time of year. The Library was gorgeous, just a really nice space. I wish we could have caught the auditorium open, but hey the library so made it worth it, cool bookstore too.
Anyway after the Reina Sofia we explored the Parc di Retiro. I must saw it is beautiful even in the winter. When I last went, it was spring and was spectacular, but it more than held its own in winter. Retiro is on the small kind of scale as Central Park, where is the major green space for a very large metro area. The key differences being the forms of the urbanism around them and the planning approaches used. Central Park is more raw natural space, while Retiro is a heavily planned baroque series of spaces and interventions.

We then went to Plaza de Colon for lunch… yes we broke down and went to Hard Rock… but hey we are determined to go every hard rock we can… no real reason just sounded fun at the time. From there we wondered on up to the Plaza de Espana and on to the Palacio Real. From there we went to Plaza Mayor, which was a very cool shopping courtyard, and not too dissimilar to some of the great roman courtyards and colonnades.

It’s official… I am a tea junkie. You people can have your coffee, just give me some hot tea, man that stuff is good, and it really helps this damn cold that I am still trying to get over since New York.

Well now we are on our train to Cordoba, thank god. I can not wait to get there and take a nice shower… there was no way I was going to that at that last nasty hostal we were in. I think that is the one place in the world I have seen where the women’s room was more disgusting than the men’s…. and that is saying something. I lost my ring that Jeannie gave me a couple years ago, actually I should say someone stole out of the bathroom, but hey it was my fault for leaving it there…. oh well she owes me a new one anyway… Well that was a bit longer than I was planning…huh oh well off we go to Cordoba… man this ride is different from the last one. Last time we were up in the mountains, now we are crossing these wide valleys between. It really quite beautiful, it would be even nicer if there wasn’t all of the soupy fog, but it sure does make the mountains look cool when they pop out of it. Right now we are going theses huge groves of olive trees… its crazy how many damn olive trees there are here… oh well… until next time…