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and supposedly medieval, but most of the old buildings seem to have been replaced by more modern apartments except for their foundations.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