5/28 – The trip to Madrid is a 4 hour drive from Bilbao, and half of it is on 2-lane mountain roads. But it is certainly worth the trip.
Most Spanish towns have a central plaza. Madrid's Plaza de Mayor is an enormous open courtyard, where we had coffee and tea, and I bought a painting.
I was so glad to get the opportunity to visit the Prado Museum.
Diego Velazquez sits outside the museum.
There are so many wonderful artists are represented here: El Greco, Diego Velazquez, Bosch, Fra Angelico, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens and the amazing Goya. Seriously beautiful work here. And Picasso. I had never cared for Picasso's work. Not saying he's not talented, but he just wasn't my style. The Prado has a lot of his work, which I found interesting, and then I saw Guernica, which changed everything. It's huge, covering a whole wall, and I cannot explain the dramatic impact it has. Simply amazing! The museum even has the preliminary sketches and layouts of the painting.
There are a lot of fountains in Madrid. Fuente de la Cibeles, the symbol of Madrid, is a lady in a chariot drawn by 2 lions. It's not the largest or the fanciest, but it's my favorite.
My other favorite (I am allowed to have several favorites) is this equestrian statue.
The Puerta de Toledo stands close to one of the metro stations. Like so many monuments, I am not sure what it represents, but what ever that is, it does so beautifully.
The architecture around here is just amazing. This beauty with the fancy top is the City Hall.
Palace de Real (royal palace) is gorgeous; it's still used on some state occasions. Randy, Rita and I were able to take a tour.
Along a walkway is a row of beautifully sculpted statues. These are the "Gothic Kings", a series of Visigoth and Christian rulers.
The gardens behind the palace are laid out in hedge mazes and tall evergreens, which are sculpted into round columns.
Rita had explained to us that gas stations in Spain are not service stations. They don't sell soda and they don't have public restrooms. But usually they are bigger than this! This was the most economically small gas station I've ever seen.
We stayed at was the Hotel Convention while we were in Madrid. Usually we ate local food, but once while we here we had Kentucky Fried Chicken, and on another visit we even went to McDonalds. Goodness knows there was no place else to get fried chicken or a hamburger, plus sometimes we wanted something very quick so we could keep exploring. But that was the exception; we loved the excellent Spanish food here. In one of these restaurants was where Rita first told us the joke about "Criadillas", which is a dish made with bull testicales. A guy ordered this one day after a bullfight, got a big meaty serving, and loved it. The next time he ordered it, he got a little tiny serving. When he asked why, the waiter said "Well, sometimes the bull doesn't lose".
El Rastro is a swap-met/flea market of enormous proportions; it operates every Sunday and covered miles. Love this.
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