Ah...family support

With spirits and energy levels flagging, a visit from my beloved Aunt and Uncle from California could not have come at a better time.  We met them in Madrid on their way to France and on our way to Barcelona.  Together, we re-explored Madrid (but this time without the peace of the summer holiday time) and enjoyed showing them around the city we had come to know and appreciate.  Autumn had arrived and with it, cold and windy weather, but also lovely fall scenes in Retiro Park.



We also had a chance to visit another recommended city, Toledo.  We spent a day as real tourists and made our way up and down the hills of the city, stopping at every place that boasted an El Greco painting inside (including his completely disappointing burial site - visible through a roughly-made hole through the wooden floor of an old church).  It was an attractive but exceedingly touristy place.
    

Thanks so much, Harry and Ellie, for taking such good care of us and allowing us to be your guides in Spain.  We also want to send a special thank you to our wonderful Spanish friends, José, Teresa and Sebastian for their wonderful hospitality in Madrid.  It´s always better to stay with friends!

Fun in Madrid

We left the nuthouse for three days of playing tourist in Madrid. We were unimpressed by our first impressions. In almost every Spanish city, the late nineties and early 2000’s brought an enormous building frenzy. Immigrants and the newly wealthy middle-class provided a ready market for the greedy building developers who went absolutely gangbusters with ugly and sprawling housing developments (urbanizaciones) ringing the cities. As you enter a Spanish city by car or bus, you find it hard to imagine that there are quaint old quarters or barrios and tasteful, beautiful architecture. This is certainly true of Madrid, which has sprawled outward in all directions for at least an hour.

Upon arrival at our hotel, Mom and I chatted on Yahoo Messenger and my reply to her question, “How’s Madrid? I’ve heard it’s beautiful” was “Hmmm. You heard wrong. It’s sprawling and unattractive.” I feel guilty about bad-mouthing Madrid, because after 4 days (on two separate visits), I am really fond of the city. The city center is chock-full of gorgeous buildings, plazas with elaborate fountains, lots of green park space and one of the cleanest and cheapest metro systems I’ve ever seen.

It’s a big city and exploring it on foot is quite a distance workout, but the streets are a delight to walk down (with the major exception of the fact that it was INCREDIBLY hot!) because of the profusion of attractive buildings and tree-lined promenades. I decided that Madrid seemed like a very livable city, albeit a bit expensive (especially compared to the rest of Spain). We have since been told that there’s a real problem with smog and theft, but that hasn’t diminished our enthusiasm for it (as a major city, anyway.)

We saw much in our time there so I’ll just mention the highlights, all of which were totally free!

The Prado Museum free hours – even though the place was packed, we enjoyed the fact that we had from 6 to 8 pm to roam the collection for free.

The cathedral with its Africanesque ceiling and its modern stained glass designs

The Royal Palace on the left and the Cathedral on the right


The rain forest growing inside the Atocha train station


The 1920’s era buildings, gates and fountains along the Gran Via – especially at night

The Bank of Spain


Puerta de Alcala


Buen Retiro and West parks

The architecture exhibit at the Caixa Forum

Walking around the different neighborhoods, from the hip Huerta area to the swanky Salamanca barrio



The Plaza Mayor



Of course, we did get a rather warped view of the city as it absolutely empties during the month of August. Many of the restaurants were closed for summer vacations and apparently, the traffic was reduced to nothing (at least that's what our Spanish friends said...we thought there was still plenty of car activity).