Saturday 11.20.2010


Mad about Madrid

Okay, that is an overstatement, but after an early overcast the sun has come out and everything looks a lot better to us. While Mary gets ready John goes out to find one of the fifty Starbucks we saw yesterday afternoon and they all give him the slip. He settles for a couple café grandes from McDonalds across the square.

Our walking tour this morning starts in front of our hotel. On the other side of the square is an impressive building that was once Spain’s first post office and is now the office of the governor of the county. In front of that building is a plaque marking the exact center of Spain and we assume it is philosophically true as well as geographically. There are very long lines of people stretching across the square and after some inquiries we find out the people are waiting to buy their Christmas lottery tickets. We have known about the Christmas lottery (20 euros per ticket) for some time and the tickets have been on sale for months. The issue here is that these particular ticket sellers are “luckier” than others and therefore people feel their odds will be improved by waiting in line for an hour or more. Yet another cultural difference.

Across from our coffee McDonalds we find the Salon la Mallorquina, a delicious looking patisseria that is calling our names. Mary gets a crusty sweet round thing and John gets an éclair shaped cream filled piece of heaven. We’re glad we found this on our first morning. From here we poke around some historic buildings and interesting sights on the way to the Plaza Mayor. This is a café-lined square with all the appropriate statuary and where what we believe is a Christmas market just being set up. We have been seeing Christmas decorations for more than a week but nothing really gets started until early December. They are assembling a 75-foot high metal Christmas tree right in front of our hotel but, alas, it looks like we will miss all the fun.


We stick our heads into a bar on Plaza Mayor where several of the famous bulls from the local bullfights have their heads mounted on the wall. Like artists, they tend to be more famous after they’re dead. Below the Plaza Mayor are Mesones, little cave-like bars and shops that are built around the structural support of the plaza above. We sightsee our way down to the Cathedral—yes another one. There is some sort of ceremony going on with a bunch of middle-aged and up people dressed in black capes and hats. Since there are females involved we don’t think this is a Spanish Knights of Columbus, but it might be something similar. This is the newest of the Cathedrals we have visited being finished in 1993 after a hundred and ten-year construction project. The stars of the building are the coffin of St. Isidro, Madrid’s patron Saint, and the 5,000 pipe organ that fills one wall.


Across a plaza from the Cathedral is the Spanish Royal Palace. It is a 2000-room behemoth on the peak of a hill overlooking western Madrid. King Philip V, the builder, was a grandson of Louis XIV of France and obviously was a fan of Versailles. The line to get inside is longer than the lottery lines and we aren’t going to spend a sunny Saturday doing that. Instead we spend our time in outside masterpieces Plaza Orient, Plaza Espana, and Templo de Debod. The Plaza Espana is having a Mexican Fiesta with a Mexican band performing and booths selling real nachos, chips and salsa, and Mexican beer. We felt like we were on the West Side of St. Paul.

From there we hooked up with the Grand Via and strolled through the theater district and big shopping areas for more than a mile. It is almost 3:00 and time for lunch. We pick a spot with sidewalk seating and an interesting concept. You fill out a form with all the little tapas you would like to eat, take it to the counter where they give you your drinks, and call you when your food is ready. The issue is that it takes 20-minutes in line to turn in the order and another twenty in line before the food is ready. A forty-minute fast food experience and they didn’t even get the order right, but we were not going to start over. We aren’t ready to stop yet while the sun is shining so go back through the Plaza Mayor to make a dinner reservation for Sunday night and then slowly make our way back to the hotel.

During our early evening break there is a huge ruckus in the square and we look out to see at least a thousand people marching behind a street-wide banner. We get the drift that it is an antifascista march with some of the marchers carrying USSR flags (they haven’t received the news about that one) and anti-swastika signs (also timely). They stop outside our hotel and pull out the loudspeakers and rant for about a half-hour with occasional chanting and then fade away. There has been a heavy police presence (cars, motorcycles, vans and helicopters) during the entire process so the whole thing was choreographed pretty well. We eventually find out that November 20th is the anniversary of the death of Franco and his passing is marked every year with these “good riddance” types of demonstrations. That puts it into better perspective for us.

We have no plans for dinner and Mary has been talking pasta so we finally find a place that opens a little early (8:40) for us. John’s shrimp and asparagus pasta is pretty good and Mary’s carbonara is not so good. Since the Spanish always cook their bacon medium-rare, that was an odd choice for her, but she plugged away at it. The service was pretty good from a small Romanian woman and her Spanish fellow trainee. She said all the tourists eventually need real food.

We stop for one last beer at one of the little cave bars (messone) below the Plaza Mayor before packing it in for the night.


Today's Picture: On our late afternoon walk we found this fellow slicing his Jamon Iberico in the doorway of his cafe. Every place we have eaten for the last month has had this same setup, but always inside.