Madrid 19th May

Wednesday 19 May
 

As we had had a late night the night before we decided that we would treat ourselves to a sleep in and wouldn’t set the alarm thinking we would wake up around 8 or 8.30am. We woke up at 11.30am....
 

We quickly headed out not wanting to waste the day and found a café for breakfast. A traditional Spanish breakfast is called churros and chocolate, which are essentially donuts in long strips and a cup of melted chocolate, which you dip the donuts into. It was awesome. Fueled up on chocolate and saturated fat we headed towards the Museo del Prado which houses the most famous works of Spanish artists particularly Goya and Velázquez. It was pretty amazing building with a huge number of paintings and sculptures but again there was no photography allowed. Notable paintings we did see was ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Bosch and the 'Clothed Maja' by Goya.

 

The Museum adjoins the Botanical gardens and as the weather was insanely good again we wandered up to the Parque del Retiro. Once the playground for Royal children, the park opened up to the public in 1869. The main feature of the park is the Monument of Alfonso the 7th, with a large man made lake where people can hire rowboats and laze the day away. We bought lunch from one of the many overpriced lunch places in the park, and caught some rays.

A short stroll from there and we came across the Puerta de Alcalá gates which is the ceremonial gateway erected by Carlos the third in his effort to improve Eastern Madrid.



On that side of town was also another famous art gallery, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. This collection was a private collection assembled by Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, and was bought by the Spanish government in 1992. As the collection goes from the 1600s to the 1990s, it is regarded as one of the most complete illustrations of the history of Western art. Louise was pretty stoked to see many of the artists she studied in art history at school, like Pollock, Kandinsky and Picasso.

Again we wanted to take full advantage of the sun so we went back to the gardens. The Palacio de Cristal (Crystal Palace) is also situated in the Royal Gardens. This very random building was designed to stage an exhibition of tropical plants from the Philippines in 1887. Now it is used to show exhibitions of art.

The lake in front of the building is home for many turtles, probably cousins of Myrtle and Max.



In need of a rest and some shade, we headed back to Plaza Mayor and got ourselves a Cruzcampo (Spanish beer) and some las aceitunas (olives). The olives were disappointing. On the way we passed by the (supposedly) oldest restaurant in the world called Botin (the Guinness Book of records states this is true, started in 1725). As it was quite expensive we weren’t allowed to have dinner there.



Dinner, we were back in the Plaza Mayor getting ripped off and constantly getting asked for money. Getting a little tiresome.

Highlight: The Gardens, the number of random statues and fountains in them are just awesome.
Lowlight: Getting ripped off, it sucks being a tourist sometimes.
Interesting fact: Spanish people like to eat an incredible amount of cheese, ham and bread, they eat sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Interesting fact #2: Hamish had had enough of getting ripped off and wanted to swear in Spanish so then we could at least express our true feelings and be understood. We jumped on Google and our pick which was in the top 10 was - Cago en tu leche!!