Wanderung 17

No Rain in Spain, not even on the Plain!

April-May 2008

Saturday May 3rd 2008

Noon position: Madrid, Spain.

Bob:

Using my new bowls and spoons, we had a quick breakfast of cereal in our room, packed up, paid our bill, and were on the road to Madrid by 7:50. Traffic on the A-42 interstate between Toledo and Madrid was light and I kept a steady 120 kilometers per hour, exactly the posted speed limit. After we reached the outskirts of Madrid, I stopped to fill up the car to avoid the refueling charge, and then we worked our way into the central downtown area where the Avis office and our hotel were both located. We finally dropped off the car and finished the paperwork by 9:30, and since that was before 10:00 we didn't have to pay for an extra day. Then we gathered up all our belongings and looking probably like a couple of Gypsies we trundled our way about a mile down the Grand Via to our hotel.

"Juan", the proprietor, hadn't expected us that early, but one of the residents of the apartments gave him a call on his cell phone and Juan turned up a few minutes later. The room wasn't ready, of course, as we were quite early, but Juan locked our luggage up in his office and we were free to wander about the city a bit. We knew we wanted to see the Prado Art Museum, so we walked down the Grand Via to a roundabout with a large fountain in it and turned right. The architecture of many of the buildings in Madrid was really pretty. It reminded me of Baroque period decorations except that the buildings looked quite new rather than old and dilapidated. Buildings probably keep better in the arid, semi-desert conditions of central Spain, so I would estimate many of the buildings were constructed in the mid 1800s.

Monika:

We decided against the official breakfast. Instead we had cereal in our room in two old yogurt cups Bob had saved and with the spoons we bought yesterday evening. So we were all set. We left shortly before 8. The car had to be returned before 10. Since Madrid is only 70 odd kilometers north of Toledo and it was a Saturday morning, we hoped for the best. We studied our Madrid map and found that the interstate from Toledo should lead us directly to the Gran Via, where the AVIS office was supposed to be.

For once everything worked as planned. This part of Madrid had wide Boulevards and good signs. We did not get lost. We saw the AVIS office and a sign directing us to a parking garage, where we left the car with the AVIS guy, marking in our contract that the car had no damage and a full tank. We trundled with all our luggage to the office and got all the paper work taken care off. By now it was 9:30. We had told the owner of the place we had booked that we would be there by 10:30. It was about half a mile to the place from the AVIS office. We slowly made our way, stopping at Dunkin Donuts for a cup of coffee (2.05 Euros for a large) and a snack at McDonalds. McDonalds was in an old building at a corner. One of the prettier McDonalds!

The place we had booked was called Apartments Cabellero de Gracia, so I had not really expected a hotel reception area. But the entrance to the garage and the apartment was locked tight. Three old geezers came out and let us wait in the entrance of the drive where we were out of the way and it was nice and cool. One of them was nice enough to call the owner to let him know we were here. He came 10 minutes later and let us store our luggage in his office. He said our room would be ready in an hour. He was very friendly with English that was only slightly better than our (non-existent!) Spanish.


 


 

Bob:

Quite in contrast to the old cities of Granada and Toledo, Madrid had wide boulevards where multiple lanes of traffic could actually move safely at a reasonable speed. Pedestrians still had the right-of-way at the Zebra stripe crosswalks, of course, but since the traffic was generally coming at us faster it was a bit more nerve wracking to simply step out in front of the onrushing car like all the Spaniards did. It was kind of a game of "Pedestrian Bluff" where the car bluffed at not stopping and the pedestrian bluffed at not seeing the car until finally one or the other gave way.

When we reached the Prado we saw lines to get tickets and lines almost around the block to get into a special exhibition on Goya. But I had spied, with my little eye, a Spanish Naval Museum on the way to the Prado, so we returned there to spend some time before getting back to our hotel room. I wandered around for over 2 hours looking at all the ship models, paintings of battles, and naval artifacts like cannons, cutlasses, pistols etc. I found it particularly amusing that all the paintings were of the Spanish defeating the Dutch and the Spanish defeating the British. I expect a British Naval museum would have a rather different set of paintings! There was no painting of the battle of Trafalgar, of course, but one memorial plaque on the wall commemorated the heroic victims of the battle. But they only listed about 30-40 victims and every man jack of them was "Don" something or other, so it was quite clear that from the Spanish point of view the only victims worth talking about were their nobility.

The collection of ship models was truly astonishing and covered every epoch in the Spanish Navy from the 1300s onward. I particularly enjoyed the half-hull cutaway models that showed the interior details about ballast, stowage, and other mundane things that simply bore most people to tears. Unfortunately Monika is one of those people and left to her own devices she would probably never have crossed the threshold of the Naval Museum. Well, she tolerated it graciously for a long time, but by the end of two solid hours she was bored stiff and really wanted to get out!

Monika:

Well, we were at leisure with no luggage and time to spare. We decided to go to the Prado, the premier museum of Madrid that everyone HAS TO see, to find our about hours etc. We saw that even at 11:30 there was a line for tickets, so we decided to get there early tomorrow morning, it opens at 9AM. We have to do it tomorrow, since it is closed on Monday.

While walking to the Prado, Bob had espied a Museo Naval. Of course, we had to stop. There were 14 rooms and 2 larger areas crammed full of models of all sorts and sizes of ships through the centuries. On the walls were pictures of naval battles and admirals. Even the Generalissimo had his picture in the modern section, but to make up for it the present king and queen also had their pictures. Besides ships and battles there were also weapons of all sorts hanging up. Bob, of course, was in seventh heaven. What helped us getting through this place in 2 hours instead of 4, was that all the signs were in Spanish and NO PHOTOGRAPHY.


 

Bob:

Back at the hotel we found Juan, who had already taken our luggage up to our room, bless his heart, and signed in. We were pleasantly surprised to see our suite equipped with a dining table, four chairs, and a full kitchenette with refrigerator, stove, microwave, washer, and even dishes and cutlery! So we went shopping at the hole-in-the-wall grocery just down the street and fixed a solid lunch of spaghetti and beans.

Monika:

So we made it back to the hotel in two hours instead of one. Meanwhile, Juan had taken our luggage up to our room. It was a small efficiency with stove and refrigerator and dishes. Very nice and convenient. We made a quick foray to a nearby grocery store and stocked up on basics (Sprite, sangria, meat) but also a noodle dish were all you had to do was add water. So we had a nice hot meal. It is really nice to have this little kitchen area and a table with chairs. In addition, the place has free internet, so we could let everyone know that we were alive and well.


 

Bob:

I had a carbo crash after that and turned in for a nap while Monika went exploring, but when she came back she told me about the El Cortes Ingles department store that had a good food section in the basement, so we went there to shop for the next couple of days.

While we were there, Monika took me up to the toy section, where they had assembled some marvelous toys out of "Mechano" parts, the European version of my old Erector Set. The things they had constructed were just amazing and I really liked seeing exactly how they were made. Maybe my granddaughters will like to build things and then I can buy a set of that for me, oops, them I mean, them! Then we returned to our room for a light dinner and took turns on the computer and with the crostic puzzles until it was time for bed.

Monika:

After lunch, we worked on the Internet. When Bob decided to take a nap, I went out for a little bit of shopping. Our place is just a block off the main shopping area, the Gran Via. So I went along the Gran Via, marveling at the old houses. I stopped at a Zara store, a clothing store our table mates, especially Vicky, had highly recommended. They really have quite interesting clothes and not very expensive. I had fun looking. I then went into the major department store, the Cortes Ingles. They had a supermarket in the basement and 7 stories full of merchandise. At the top was a toy store with an exhibition of things put tougher from a mechanix type set. Very impressive.

When I got back, Bob was getting up, so we went back to the department store, stocked up on some more food and admired the contraptions that one could make with enough time and imagination. We also picked up a 2 CD set of songs of the Spanish Civil War. Sounds interesting. Back at our apartment we had sandwiches for dinner and then quietly amused ourselves with writing and doing crostics.


 

Copyright 2008 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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