Europe 2009, part 4

Friday, May 1:

• Dan makes his way to the railroad station to pick up tickets for Segovia. Succeeds. Feels proud of himself. (And yes, the round trip tickets were 15 euros.)
• A big, loud demonstration/protest march took place down near the Prado. Which we ran into on our way to the Prado. Which was closed for May Day. Which is why there was the big, loud demonstration/protest march in the first place.
• Stroll in Retriro Park.
• Lunch at an outdoor cafe.
• Spend much of the afternoon on the web looking for nonsmoking restaurants in Madrid. No luck. So we ate dinner again in the hotel's dining room.

Saturday, May 2:

• Train to Segovia. A wonderful, fast, clean, smooth-riding, quiet train.
• Segovia's aqueduct and castle were all they were advertised to be. The cathedral was nothing very special. Highlights included:

• sitting in the sun in a sidewalk cafe for a couple hours drinking some beer and eating some snacks (including something that tasted like shrimp inside a salted hush puppy -- fabulous.)
• military parade to, and concert at, the Alcazar.
• walking down out of town along a river to the tomb of St. John of the Cross in a Carmelite convent.

• Back in Madrid, pretty poor Chinese food for dinner (the restaurant permits smoking, but we got there before most other people did and we sat way back in a corner)
• More military music at Plaza Mayor after dinner. This performance, and the one at Segovia, apparently was a commemoration of Dia del Communidad de Madrid. Either that or they were getting a jump on the 3rd of May.

Sunday, May 3:

• Prado. A big disappointment. I was expecting something like the experience we had at the Louvre last year and didn't get it. It had some nice Raphaels and Zurbarans and a few nice Dutch pieces, but overall, I prefer Washington's National Gallery.
• We enjoyed the Thyssen Museum much more than the Prado. Better selection, range, and variety of work, all in a strikingly attractive building.
• Supper was carry-out "Donner kebaps." Very poor. I think they used mayonnaise instead of yogurt.
• I went out to search for a laundromat that Google had found for us, but after realizing that I, a lonely-looking old white guy had wandered deep into Madrid's homosexual heartland at 10 pm, I decided that I'd look for the laundromat in the morning. On my way back to the hotel, I managed to wander through Madrid's heterosexual heartland -- or at least the heart of its red light district. All in all, an interesting stroll.

Monday, May 4th:

• Retrace my steps of the night before and this time continue all the way to the laundromat only to find that none of the machines work.
• Drag our clothes back to the hotel.
  
• While waiting for the elevator – be sure to ask us about the elevators in Madrid -- I turned to the porter and said "Busco lavanderia automatica." And he said, in rapid Spanish that I can't begin to repeat, but which I was somehow able to understand, "You dope! There's one just 5 minutes away, right down this street." So, back out I go, and sure enough, the porter is right. Except it's closed. The sign on the window says that it opens in 10 minutes, at 9:30, so I hang around. After 20 minutes, I ask some workmen nearby, and don't understand a word of their answer, but the body language seems to suggest that it will open soon. And so it does. Except it doesn't look like a laundromat I looks like a laundry – a place where you drop your clothes off and then pick them up a couple days later. But the owner – a nice guy who's got two canaries in the shop – assures me that I can do my own laundry there. And then he proceeds to do it for me, while I wait. At one point, I go out for coffee and ask if I can bring some back for him and the woman who works for him. He declines. Comes time to settle up, the bill is 13 euros. Which is a real bargain. At the first place I went to, I would have had to do it myself and it would have cost at least 15.50 – and that's only if I'd overloaded the tiny machines and run them without detergent (because none was available). So I gave my friendly laundry operator 15 euros and told him the extra 2 were for all the help he'd given me. He refused them, saying (I think) something like "No, you offered to treat us to coffee. That's thanks enough."
• Monday afternoon, we go into a small restaurant, tell the waiter(?)/owner(?) that we don't know anything about Spanish food and ask what he recommends. We wind up with chicken paella and chicken rice soup. The food was OK. Talking to the waiter was fun. Afterwards, we go to Reina Sofia Museum to see Guernica. Everyone should. But that's the only thing you should do there. Everything else in the whole ****ing building is crap. And it's all arranged crappily.
• After the museum, we walked to the nearby train station to buy tickets for a day trip to Toledo. Not because we were desperate to see Toledo -- we'd been to a quaint medieval town (Segovia) a couple days before, and last year in Italy we had visited a couple dozen. We weren't desperate to see another example of the genre, but it sounded better than another day in Madrid.
• After buying the tickets, we told a woman at the information counter that we had heard about a park in the west of the city where we could get a good view out over Madrid. She guessed what we were referring to (West Park, oddly enough), and told us how to find it. Remarkably, we did find it. Remarkably, the view was indeed very nice. Remarkably a juggler was practicing / entertaining himself, so we got a free show. And most remarkable of all, a wonderfully maintained 2200-year-old Egyptian temple -- the Temple of Debod -- graces the park. That's a 2200-year-old Egyptian temple, smack in the middle of a Madrid park. Who'd a thought?

Tuesday, May 5th:

• Metro to Atocha Station and train to Toledo. Wander up and down (nothing is flat there) a dizzying maze of "streets" that are about 24 inches wider than a car (and there are a lot of cars and no sidewalks in Toledo!) looking for the cathedral. Find it. Not very impressive, and we learn that it costs 7 euros to go in. "Why bother?," I ask. "We've seen dozens and dozens of old cathedrals. Last year in Italy, when they were all new to us, they were thrilling. But we're not likely to be thrilled now. And anyway, it really doesn't look like anything special." But we don't have anything else to do, so we fork over the cost of two tickets and go in. And we find that it's fabulous. I won't try to describe it. Search on the web for pictures, if you care to. What I will mention are some astounding 800-year-old illuminated manuscripts that look like they were done yesterday. And a tiny (3 or 4 room) museum inside the cathedral that I'll take over the Prado any day of the week; when we entered, the first 4 pictures we saw were by Titian, Raphael, El Greco, and Caravaggio. (Caravaggio's was “John the Baptist.”)
• Several other "attractions" (the Alcazar and El Greco Museum) were closed for renovation. Not sure we would have gone into either if they'd been open, but in the event, we didn't have to make the decision. We did find a 10th century mosque -- nothing to say about it except it's old and it's named, rather surprisingly, I'd say, "The Mosque of Christ of the Light." As for the rest, a little shopping and, of course, and some sitting and relaxing at outdoor cafes.

Wednesday, May 6:

• Back to the Atocha train station, this time by cab (the first cab we've used during our trip), to board the train for a 3 hour trip to Barcelona.