Adios Madrid and Spain

Leo and I spent our last day wandering through the Madrid neighbourhoods and doing some last minute shopping.

We dropped in at the Plaza Mayor, a very large square surrounded by arcaded buildings filled with restaurants and bars (and tourists).

We checked out the Malasena and Chueca districts, which are more residential than the Centro.  The streets are wider and many of the buildings are painted pink, so it has a lighter, airier feel.  Many of the storefronts have been decorated by graffiti artists.

We read that there was a building of note on Calle San Fernando, so we wandered down that way until we came upon this:

the Casa Longoria, built in flamboyant Spanish art nouveau style.  Contrast this to the comparatively severe art nouveau  architecture we saw in Helsinki last year:

and you get an idea of the difference in style between north and south.

We returned to the Parque Retiro, with its iconic topiary,

and revisited it's central pool, much less crowded with rowboats than on Sunday,

and the Palacio Crystal, currently closed while an artist was constructing an installation.

It has a small pool outside, planted with North American bald cypresses.

But no crocodiles.

Leo has been running through the park these last few mornings, and he showed me his favourite fountain,

decorated with water spouting gremlins.

Then there was nothing left to do but pack our bags and get a few hour's sleep before catching a taxi to the airport at 4 a.m. the next morning.

The Prado and Madrid Neighbourhoods

Entrance Hall, Prado Museum

We lined up at 10 in the morning to get into the Prado.  While we were waiting to get in about 6 parrots flew over, most of them carrying sticks for their nests.  Apparently there are hundreds of these escaped and now naturalized parrots living in the Retiro Park.  Along with North American racoons, also escaped pets.  They're now trying to figure out how to get rid of both species.

We spent most of the day wending our way through the very large and very confusing museum.  The Prado was opened in 1819 by the then Queen and its collection was based on the royal collection.  Needless to say there are many, many portraits of the royal family, particularly by Velazquez and Goya.  Many, many depictions of the Hapsburg lip, the most famous of which is Las Meninas, a portrait of la Infanta, daughter of the monarchs, but also depicting her nurses (las meninas), Velazquez painting, and her parents reflected in a mirror.

Actually not much of the Hapsburg lip in evidence here.

I gained a real appreciation for Francesco de Goya, a painter I never really got before from reproductions, particularly a series of paintings lifted from the walls of his house and painted in his old age.

Also a great self- portrait of Alberto Durero, better known by his German name, Albrecht Durer, one of my favourite painters.

I also liked two Spanish painters I'd never heard about before - Zurbaran

and Jose de Ribera

The collection is also very strong in Italian painters but I never really got to them before I got all museumed out at 3 pm.

We walked home via the las Huerte neighbourhood, a narrow streeted pedestrian zone full of cafes.

After recovering from museumitis we took a tour of some of the other Madrid neighbourhoods:

Lavapies, full of bars and nightclubs

Reggae!

and ethnic groceries and restaurants.

Then into la Latina, full of churches

and supposedly medieval, but most of the old buildings seem to have been replaced by more modern apartments except for their foundations.

Then we headed down towards the river, passing through a park where the parrots

Pollyanna wants a breadcrumb

were feeding among the pigeons.

There's lots of paintings by Goya in the Prado showing Madrilenos making merry on the shores of the Manzanares but the river is not much in evidence in the city core.  It's not even shown on the tourist map we were using, so we had to hunt it down.

In 2005 they started a project to revitalize the river by burying the motorway that separated it from the city.  There's now a 30 km long park that runs along it.  The river is channelized between 2 walls and has a rather meager flow, even after a month of rain, and is supplemented with fountains.  The trees are still rather spindly.  But the Madrilenos were out in numbers, strolling, biking, running and rollerblading in the warm evening.

We headed back into town

finally winding up on the Gran Via, the big commercial street that cuts through the city

Where we saw

the long running Spanish version of the Broadway hit (which actually was first revived in London).

Sunny Madrid

Now that we're going to spend our last two days in museums in the big city, the weather forecast is sunny weather for the next week.  Not a cloud in the sky.

After dropping off our rental car at the airport we took a taxi into the city.  It was strangely deserted even for a Sunday morning.  Then the taxi was stopped at the intersection with our street by the police.  What was going on? (Insert thoughts of terrorist attacks here.)  The taxi driver explained we would have to shlep our bags to our hotel.  Marathon in downtown Madrid!  It was only half a block to our hotel.

We have an apartment on the 4th floor looking down into the courtyard of the building.  It's very spacious, but tenement style, meaning the living area leads to the bedroom leads to the bathroom, so Janet has to go through our bedroom to get to the bathroom.

After checking in, we headed into the streets to find downtown a vast pedestrian mall for the day.  The first thing we saw was three bakery cafes with real bread and pastries.  Extremadura was a strangely pastry-free land and the bread was like gluten-free cotton batting.  Serious matter for three tourists basically living off bread, cheese, and pastry.  Well, and the occasional bag of homemade potato chips.  And bags of dirt-cheap juice oranges (delicious).

We checked out downtown Madrid as best we could while being boxed in by the marathon.  Most of Madrid is fairly modern, 18th and 19th century, compared to the other cities we've visited.  The royal palace resembles Buckingham palace.

When the marathoners thinned we were able to cross the Paseo del Prado where the impressive museums are situated.

The Caixaforum, modern building with its impressive vertical garden

Here we found a group of Spanish bagpipe players serenading the marathoners.

Leo's two favourite things in one shot!

Then we crossed over to the Retira, Madrid's big park, full of Madrilenos enjoying the first sunny day in a month.  It was packed.

We came across another group of bagpipes busking in the park, introduced Leo as a fellow bagpiper, and Leo got to play a Spanish bagpipe! Their bagpipes are much smaller and pitched much higher and have slightly different fingering.  But Leo was able to belt out a recognizable Scotland the Brave with a few bad notes.

Then we reached the central pond, chock full of rented rowboats.  Here there was a really good jazz ensemble busking for the crowds.

Last Day in Extremadura

On our last day in Extremadura, Janet opted to walk a portion of the Camino from our camping to the next albergue in Galisteo, a 6 km walk away.

Leo and I followed a route to the Sierra de la Gata.  We left the camping in Riolobos and drove through the neighboring farms.  They all had tobacco drying sheds, but the tobacco industry must be suffering (despite still many smokers) because many of the sheds are being plastered over to cover the ventilation, presumably for other uses.

We stopped at a reservoir but there were not many birds there, then drove by small holdings with many stone walls and small huts made of many stones.

Then we headed up into the mountains, first through an area of terraced olive orchards.  All the olive trees had been pollarded, cut back to dtumpd thrn allowed to sprout back, something I hadn't seen anywhere else in Spain.  Next through pine forests.  Deforested areas like the hill shown here were being replanted with pines.

We took a windy, single-layer switchback camino into the mountains, stopping at a Roman road that led up the Valley of the River Ambroz.

Here the heathers were growing taller than me between the pines.

Most of the road was dirt but there was a portion where the old stones remained, and we could se how it had been constructed and shored up along the edge.

We didn't get far though before it started to rain, so we returned to the road and drove until we we reached the pass.  There the road led into Portugal so we turned around as we were not a lower to leave the country in our rental car and drove back to find a place for lunch.

In the town of Pozuelo de Zarzon, we stopped at  a taberna for the menu del dia,  which we had to decipher from our waitress's handwriting and her patient explanations (in Spanish).  It's always a gamble, but it all turned out well, we had a fine meal:  mushroom omelet and medallions of pork with cheese sauce and French fried potatoes, flan (custard) for dessert for Leo; and asparagus in vinaigrette and mystery fish fillet (this turned out to be very dense and chicken like - tuna? - and delicious), torta mandarina (orange torte) for Connie.  Nothing was too over salted and bread, water, wine , and coffee were included.  15€ each ($22).

We thought this was a pretty classy joint, but then I went to use the servicios - no toilet seats!

We returned to our apartment to find the sun had come out, and spent the evening basking in the warmth and packing in preparation of returning our rental car tomorrow.

Valles des Jerte and de la Vera

Today  we explored the Valles de la Vera and del Herte, known for their terraced cherry orchards and half-timbered villages.

We started at the Yuste monastery (closed) 

and drove up a windy country road into deciduous oak forest.  After numerous switchbacks, we came over the top and descended into the valley of Garganta la Olla.  It's a very old half-timbered town, and its citizens are very proud of it as two of them stopped us to tell us how special it was.

Checking out the old houses

Resting on a XVI century bench

Next we headed up a higher mountain pass and left spring and cherry blossoms behind

and hiked through the heather

up to an Embalse (dammed reservoir) which had a great view of the town of Piornal down below,

and also, the plant of the day:

Wild daffodils.  Unfortunately, we did not place a coin next to it for a sense of scale, the blossom is about a centimeter across.

Monfrague National Park

Today we visited Spain 's best and wildest park.  There is one tiny village that has been converted into the National Park headquarters.  It differs from most Spanish towns because the houses are made of stacked slate rather than large cut rocks or whitewashed surfaces. 

Most of the park is inaccessible to allow for undisturbed nesting sites for the many vultures and raptors, but two roads are open and they are dotted with viewing sites, mostly of rocky crags covered with vulture and raptor nests.

We saw hundreds of  griffon vultures roosting

and on their nests, a nesting Perigrine falcon pointed out to us by the park naturalist, and one of two rare and endangered black stork nests.

Bird of the Day!

Nearby a group of Park rangers arrived on a boat with a man made nest.  They proceeded to dismantle the other black stork nest and move it up slope because they were worried that the recent flooding would inundate the original nest.

Photo

Leo also took some good pictures of

a chaffinch,

a blue rockthrush

a red-rumped swallow

and

a chough


We climbed up to the obligatory castillo for a great panoramic view.

We came home to have supper at our lodgings.  The hotel also serves as an albergue for pilgrims walking the Camino from Seville to Santiago de Compostela  At dinner we met two pilgrims from far away Grand Forks and Christina Lake, BC.


Janet had lots of questions as she hopes to do the Camino herself someday. They say the last week has been a challenge because of the rain.   Part of the route has been flooded and our host has been ferrying pilgrims across with his 4x4.