Monday May 5th, 2008
Noon position: Madrid, Spain.
Bob: This might strike some folks as comical, but our first order of business was to check out Madrid's Metro system to see if we could easily take it out to the airport. Trying to do that was tempting because our 2-day Tourist passes were valid on all the Metro lines, and on our Metro map we had found a direct line leading out to the airport. But we had been sensitized by our problems schlepping our luggage around London on their Tube system during Wanderung 15, so we were going to check out in particular if there were unavoidable staircases on any of the stations along our route. The answer was, in short, yes indeed there were unavoidable staircases on many of the older stations and lines in the Madrid system. But the very newest lines, the one out to the airport and another one cutting through town, had escalators at all stations (as well as air-conditioned trains, yay!). Unfortunately, we were near the Grand Via station on one of the older lines, so there was no way to avoid staircases, which could be a problem with our suitcases. Trying out different possible routes and checking the connections out at the airport (very nice at that end) unfortunately consumed almost the entire morning, so we returned to the hotel for lunch and then headed out to see the royal palace. |
Monika: After having found out in London that all subway stations are not created equal as far as ease of transfer with luggage was concerned and since we had a 2-day tourist pass for the Metro in Madrid leftover from last time, when we spent our time in Madrid mainly in our hotel room, we decided first to try out the Metro system and check on various transfer stations to the subway that would get us to the airport. Our apartment was only a block away from a Metro station. However, it turned out that station was one of the older ones with no escalators. When we took one of the trains around 9:30 it was very crowded. The transfer from the old Metro to a newer line, still had stairs to cope with, but once on the newer Metro line 10, the last transfer to the train to the airport, line 8, was a breeze. The Metro has actually been extended to go all the way to the newest terminal, terminal 4, where we would be leaving from. So we decided to walk a few blocks and go directly to line 10, which did not look to be too bad a walk and would give us only one fairly easy transfer. Being satisfied with these arrangements, we went back to the apartment for a "home cooked" meal of a spaghetti mix with the turkey we had bought. We also knew, we could do the on-line check-in and seat selection 24 hours before our flight, which was leaving the next day at 12:35. So at 12:36 I was signed into the BA website getting to the seat assignment. To my surprise, I could not only do the seat assignments for the flight to London, but also for the one from London to Washington. Since I was one of the first, I got the best seats in economy: two seats in an exit row right behind the business class. I picked also two aisle seats right behind business for the Madrid-London flight so that we could begin our sprint through Heathrow as soon as possible after landing. |
Bob: For 8 Euro each, we were admitted to the palace grounds and could see four sets of exhibits. The first set was the armory, and it had an extensive collection of the arms and armor used in the 1500s and 1600s. Most of the pieces came from the King's armor collection and they were highly decorated, often with the damascene patterns we had seen on much smaller pieces of metal in Toledo. The cutest pieces were the tiny suits of armor for the young princes to play in, although how popular they were with the royal offspring I really can't say. To me, the armor looked distinctly uncomfortable, even claustrophobic. Although I saw some swords and shields, most of the arms exhibits contained firearms. Since the 1500s and 1600s were quite early in the development of firearms, the wheelock type of pistol was predominant, with only a few of the later pistols using a flintlock mechanism. I saw two things that were new to me. One was a pair of double-barreled wheelocks in an over-and-under configuration, each having a separate wheelock ignition system. They looked awkward, to say the least. The other thing was a triple-barreled flintlock pistol that used a single trigger, hammer, and piece of flint, but separate ignition pans for each of the three barrels. Apparently the thing was used by rotating the barrel assembly to bring a new barrel+ignition pan in line with the hammer after each shot was fired. That struck me as far more practical and I could just about imagine how to operate that type of firearm. (Shoot, cock, twist barrels, shoot, cock, twist barrels, shoot, and that's all, folks!) I just wish Terry, our family's antique firearms collector, had been there to see it with us. But Monika was already bored stiff by this point, so we meandered over to the next section, the central Royal Palace rooms. I must say, we certainly did get a lot of palace for our money! There was a long sequence of 10-15 intricately, ornately, and expensively furnished rooms with extraordinarily high ceilings. Each room seemed to have a different basic color. The throne room, for example, was mainly in red with extensive gilding and, of course, two thrones. We also saw rooms decorated entirely of Chinese-inspired prints and sculptures, another one with the walls completely covered in porcelain decorations and figurines. Although the rooms were magnificent they didn't look too livable to me, but the Spanish kings had in fact resided there over several centuries. Our next section was a temporary, special display on artistic tapestries from the 1500s through the 1700s, and that was very interesting. I had not known that tapestry rivaled painting as an art form for several centuries, and the beautiful tapestries hanging in the royal palace gave powerful testimony to that fact. The artistry was quite fantastic and I only wished Beth, our family's fabric artist, had been there to see it with us. The tapestries stretched almost completely from floor to ceiling, so you really had to have a palace with 15 foot ceilings or better just to be able to hang them. Some of the tapestries were faded, which was only to be expected after 400 years, but several were just brilliant and looked like they were brand new. Fascinating. Our last section was the royal apothecary, where most of the jars, bottles, and equipment dated from the late 1800s. The apothecary included not just the traditional motar and pestle and carefully labeled jars that you might expect, but even included a distillery in a back room that looked just like an Appalachian moonshiner's setup! I just wish we had Gustl, our family's pharmaceutical expert, to see that with us, but they were putting their sailboat back into the water and preparing for a bit of sailing on the Baltic Sea. |
Monika: That done, we decided to spend the afternoon looking at the other tourist attraction, the royal palace. We took Metro a couple of stations to the palace. The palace looks like two large squares joint in the middle. We bought our entrance tickets - I argued about the senior rate, which applied only to EU citizens over 65. We went into the more public of the two large squares. This square has buildings on three sides and a rather tasteful iron fence with a gate on the fourth. There usually are three things to see in the palace: the armory, several of the royal rooms, and the Royal Pharmacy. We were lucky to have a fourth choice, a temporary exhibition of wall tapestries from the 16th and 17th century. But first we went to the armory: two rather large rooms with chainmail through the ages, draped across male models, children, and horses. There was everyday chain mail, chain mail for parades, etc. I assume if one is a connoisseur of chain mail it could be fascinating. Photography was not allowed, so we got out of there rather quickly. Our next stop was the royal apartments. You walked up the stairs in a large staircase with a beautifully painted ceiling. It reminded of the Residenz in Wuerzburg that had a similarly painted ceiling in the staircase leading up to the rooms. Since Spain did not enter WWII on either side, it was never bombed. So the palace did not suffer any damage. The rooms themselves were quite beautiful. Each room had its distinct atmosphere and color. Unfortunately, this time, photography again was not permitted. But we did enjoy this glimpse into royal living. Today, the royal family does not live here anymore, but the larger rooms are still used for functions of state. We turned to the exhibit of wall hangings, and were astonished by the number of different hangings. There were also explanations about the art of weaving these enormous hangings, and the history of the weavings from the late 1500s to the end of the 1600s, when craftsmen left Holland because of the civil war, and settled in different areas, courted by different royal houses. Fascinating. The large rooms with high ceilings did these beautiful pieces justice. You could see, which pieces had been seen a lot of light and those who did not and so the original colors were still vivid. The designs of some of the more beautiful were actual created by masters like Rubens and others. The Pharmacy was something of a letdown. A lot of different ceramic bottles that used to hold all kinds of concoctions. We ended up looking at the gift store. I was surprised to only find a couple of official pictures of the king and queen, but no other royal trinkets. I have a lot of respect for King Juan Carlos. He was picked by Franco to take over, after Franco was dead. He immediately turned Spain away from dictatorship and into a constitutional monarchy. As far as I can tell, the royal family is well loved by the public, but there are no constant scandals etc as there are in England. Pictures of the royal family seem to appear only if there is something important, like last year the baptism of the younger daughter of the crown prince. |
Bob: Since the Madrid Cathedral was just across the street, we stopped in there to take a look as we left the Royal Palace. I'm not that keen on cathedrals, but this one turned out to be one of my favorites so I was glad we did stop in. The Madrid cathedral is open, airy, well-lighted, and modern rather than ancient in appearance, and for me that was refreshing. Since I have worked with stained glass, I was particularly impressed by the modern stained glass panels that adorned many of the windows. Now Frommer's guide to Spain describes them as "pop art", but after closely examing them, I thought that was a very unfair appraisal. The majority of the panels were not quite Cubist in style but certainly approaching that with many straight lines and figures formed of intersecting planes. Since Picasso, one of the founders of Cubism, lived and worked in Spain, having a Cubist influence on the stained glass panels seemed appropriate to me. I only wished that Gary, our family's expert on Roman Catholicism, was there to see such a pretty cathedral with us; he could have probably explained the function of many of the pieces. So there I was, peacefully enjoying a cathedral for once, when all of a sudden I hear a fanfare of badly-played bugles calling out a charge or something from the Royal Palace across the street. |
Monika: Well, after a palace, we decided we needed a cathedral which was right next to the palace. It seemed to have suffered a fate similar to the cathedral in Washington. It was started in the 1880s but not finished until 1990s. So a lot of the church has a modern feel to it. There is one rather old secondary altar, which had been rescued from some older church. Everything else looked rather modern, especially the stained glass windows. They reminded me of Feininger paintings. I liked them very much. Frommer's called them "Pop-Art". I find that rather harsh, but you can judge for yourself. |
Bob: Well, of course we had to go find out what that was all about, and it turned out that mounted military cadets were out having dressage practice in the huge courtyard of the Royal Palace. I counted 18 cadets mounted on white or dappled-grey horses (the "White" team) and another 18 cadets mounted on chestnut or black horses (the "Dark" team). Well, the White team and the Dark team wheeled and turned and crossed over each other, usually riding 3 abreast. There were no lines or anything but our common sense holding us back, so those of us in the impromptu audience could get as close as we liked. I definitely felt stared at by the horses when they wheeled and came prancing down straight at us. Those are smart animals! I thought I could see the little wheels going around in their heads as they thought to themselves, "what if the stupid human doesn't get out of my way and I've got all these horses right around me so I can't move aside?" I only wished the dressage-horse-riding folks in my family could have been there with me to see all that, but I did take lots of pictures and some movies to show them when I returned home. Clearly my thoughts were turning back to my family and home, so maybe the time was right for us to return to Virginia for a spell. In any case, the cheapest airplane tickets like the ones we always purchase cannot be changed or refunded, so it was time to get back to our apartment and pack for the flight home. Juan, the proprietor, had even left a bottle of wine for us in the room, so Monika had some of that and surfed the internet looking for inexpensive cruises to anywhere interesting that we could take in the future. We tried to finish off our leftover cheese and meat for dinner, knowing that we would have to throw out what we didn't eat. Then, continuing our life in the "slow lane", we read and worked crostics for a while before turning in for the night |
Monika: When we came out of the church, we heard some bugling and when we got to the fence that divided the palace square from the public square, we could see a bunch of horses doing the horsey thing. Since there did not seem any prohibition on spectators and we still had our tickets to the palace, we went back in and watched the show. It seemed that an army division of parade horses was practicing. Beside a group of buglers on white horses, there were four other groups of 8 horses each, two groups were white or grey, and the other two dark brown or black. They were practicing quadrille moves, with the different groups moving in and out of each other. In the middle was a guy who clearly was giving instructions. Ever now and then the bugles would make some noise that was supposed to help. We were, of course, snapping away and even taking some movies. What fun, and how would Phyllis have loved it, but the buglers were so off-key that Lois would have had to hold her ears. Well perfectly satisfied with having seen a lot of touristy stuff, we went back to our place. While we were gone, someone had come to make our bed, and leave a bottle of red wine. After I had opened it and tasted it - it was quite good -, I thought to myself, I really should have kept it and taken it home, since I could not possible finish it. Oh well, too late. We packed and wrote and checked the internet and finally went to bed. |
| Prolog | Map of Trip | Epilog |
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