We arrived bleary eyed on Monday. We took the metro from the airport to our apartment. The apartment is beautiful. Parquet wood floors and 12 foot tall ceilings with two balconies that look out onto the Calle Montera. The location is steps from everything in particular a dunkin' donuts and at night a gaggle of Eastern European prostitutes in hot pants and stilettos.
After a long nap we started out exploring the city. We walked down to the Palacio Real. The 1st Royal palace in Madrid burned down so this structure is new by European standards built in the late 1700s. I think Versailles largely ruined palaces for us so we didn't go inside but enjoyed the facade.
Next to the palace is a cathedral, one of no doubt many we will see on this trip but I couldn't resist going inside. After all I planned my entire vacation clothing to include sleeves specifically so I could stumble into any cathedral I happened upon and was not about to pass up this chance. I was not sorry, this cathedral had some of the most unique stained glass windows I have ever seen. While the content is typical cathedral imagery, the style is uncanny.
Our first meal in Spain was awesome. The one challenge with being located in the very center of the city is the closest restaurants are all tourist traps. Sidewalk cafes with paella and sangria for cheap. Often when we travel abroad we rely on trip advisor for reviews (Yelp is not widely used in Europe). However the best reviewed restaurant in Madrid on trip advisor is an American restaurant. Yeah no. So we are operating blind. Using only instinct to find the good eats. It is no surprise that we were drawn like a moth to the flame to a restaurant called Pimento Verde (green pepper). Thick blonde wood picnic tables with black and white gingham table cloths. The decor vaguely reminded me of the Searsucker in the Gaslamp district of San Diego. And they served Basque cuisine (which should have been no surprise given the name of the restaurant). Of course we are going to San Sebastian in a few short weeks but there is nothing wrong with a culinary preview! Sean ordered the lamb. It was a generous portion of flavorful lamb shoulder delicately slow cooked until it was tender and nearly falling apart. It was served with a small salad and sauteed potatoes that tasted mostly of butter. This simple but well executed dish was by far the star of the evening. I ordered the creamy rice with lobster. I imagine that you are picturing what I was picturing when I ordered this a bowl of risotto style rice with a few lumps of delicate lobster meat. Instead I was served large bowl with a full lobster still in the shell swimming in a sea of thick pearls of rice. The rice had been cooked with the body of the lobster giving every bite a briny flavor. I was not expecting to shell a lobster when I ordered this but thankfully it came with a unique tool unlike anything I have seen in the US. It was half shell cracker and half scissor. Using the scissors to cut through the shell to extract the lobster was relatively mess free. It was a slow meal with an excellent bottle of wine.
Most restaurants in Madrid do not even open for dinner until 8:30pm because the prevailing dinner time is between 10pm and Midnight. So in true Spanish fashion we had our meal late and left the restaurant around Midnight to wander the streets. It was a slow night (As per International Standards for a Monday evening). Although admittedly it was a slow day too. However the main boulevards were still cluttered with young people looking for a night on the town until the sky opened up and it started to pour. It had been threatening to rain all evening but once those big drops started to fall everyone but the hookers ran for cover. We called it a night early satisfied we had adjusted our sleep schedule to Spanish time.
The next morning we went to the Prado. Now this is a truly magical place. I have been to a lot of art museums around the world but this is now one of my favorites. I fell in love with art history my sophomore year of high school thanks to the passionate teachings of Mr. Bewley. I even considered it as a major while in college. While the Louvre in Paris is significantly larger and gets a lot more attention than say the Prado, I would argue that the Prado has one of the largest collection of Masterpieces in the world. Certainly per foot it has significantly more seminal works than the Louvre. Also the layout is more welcoming. The gallery rooms wind into one another making it a slow serpentine dance to see the whole place but it feels more accessible. Whereas the Louvre has many large expansive hallways that each lead into one room. Making it so you do a lot of in and out zigzagging to see the various areas. Sadly you can not take photos in the Prado and surprisingly I didn't see anyone attempting to skirt the rules by pulling out a iPhone. I think there are several reason the Prado boasts such an impressive collection. One, the art museum was created in the 1700s by the Royal Family. They specifically commissioned prominent artists such as Velasquez and Goya to produce works for the galleries. Also given the importance of art and patronage of art in catholic society and the role the church played in Spanish culture a lot of pieces were commissioned by Spaniards while in other parts of Europe. There were a lot of pieces I was excited to see. The bizarre and fanciful triptych the Garden of Earthly Delights https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights has been something I dreamed about seeing since my art history class. It is a massive piece each of the three panels is about 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide (All together it is about 7 feet tall and almost 13 feet wide) . Making the display something that can only really be appreciated in person. It is a busy piece with so many components that once you get the school children on tours out of the way you could spend all day marveling over it. The other piece that really made my day was Las Meninas. This piece has been stalking my husband and I for the last 4 years and perhaps now that we have paid homage to the original we can move on. Of course this requires explanation but I will leave that for its own blog post.
Following a long but wonderful 8 hours at the Prado we headed to the gay and hipster part of Madrid to find a restaurant for dinner. Naturally we felt most at home in this part of the city because it reminded us so much of our very own Capitol Hill. We went to a darling little restaurant with international tapas called Le Patron that was well reviewed on yelp. Given the positive reviews on yelp, the patrons were largely Americans but the food was excellent. We shared 4 large tapas (raciones) and a bottle of wine. We had a Mesa plate with hummus, baba ganoush, and phylo meat pies. Followed by goat cheese ravioli. Next came tuna tataki with edamame. And final steak tartare. We managed to eat food from 4 countries at the same restaurant and have it be high quality food. Following dinner we decided to go for a walk ending up eventually back on our street where we patronized one of the mediocre sidewalk cafes for a sangria while watching the prostitutes aggressively yet unsuccessfully attempt to pick up johns. Some of the best people watching outside of Las Vegas.
All in all its been a great start to our trip. Thanks to the Fitbit I can definitively say that during our first two days here we walked 17 miles covering most of the city a few times over. Please stay tuned for upcoming posts on the Las Meninas and Day Three: Modern art and the unspoken war, Market adventure and the architectural splendor of Madrid.
Thank you for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment