Around Madrid

I arrived in Madrid in the evening, so Day 1 was a full day.  Planning my time in Madrid was like putting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together in order to fit everything in.  Day 1 was a perfect example of that as I hopped around Madrid, mostly south and north, rather than focusing on one geographic area.  Fortunately, getting around Madrid was very easy.

The only part of Madrid’s transportation system I had a hard time with was the Cercanías, Madrid’s commuter rail.  And for the most part, the only part of the Cercanías I had a hard time with was buying tickets from the vending machine.  When I arrived at the Madrid airport the night before, I had to give up.  There was a railway company office directly opposite the machines.  The staff there were great and sold me a ticket.  I still struggled with getting tickets the rest of my trip.  I think I finally had it figured out by the very end of the trip.

Anyway, Day 1 in Madrid.  ¡Vamos!

El Retiro Park

Madrid isn’t just easy to get around by public transportation.  It’s a surprisingly walkable city, considering how large it is.  I was able to get to the day’s 1st 2 sites on foot.  On the way, I passed by the artfully shrouded Puerta de Alcalá.  The city gate stands in the center of Plaza de la Independencia.  This was a little confusing to me as Spain was usually thought of a a country that other countries declare independence from, not the other way around.  I asked my friend Paco about it later that night at dinner.  He explained that this celebrates when Spain won its independence from Napoleon’s forces.  This was news to me at the time.  But it’s a critical part of Spain’s history, as I mentioned in my brief history of Spain.

The Neoclassical Puerta de Alcalá was built by Italian Architect Francesco Sabatini on order of King Charles III to create something modern and monumental for the city’s old medieval walls.  It was completed in 1778.  It’s located right outside El Retiro Park.

El Retiro Park was exclusively for the use of the Spanish monarchy until 1868, when democracy started coming to Spain and the park became public.  Together, the park and the monuments and institutions along Paseo del Prado make up a UNESCO World Heritage site called Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of Arts and Sciences.  Puerta de Alcalá is also part of the site.

Usually I have a great sense of direction, but I totally lost my bearings in El Retiro Park.  It caused me a bit of distress.  I was surprised, however, to discover that Google Maps was still working on my phone even though I wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi.  I was confused by that and I still don’t understand it.  But it came in very handy on future dates.

Reina Sofía Museum

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre or Reina Sofía Museum, for short) is Spain’s national museum of 20th-century art.  It is 1 of the 3 museums that makes up Madrid’s Golden Triangle of Art.  The other 2 are the Prado Museum and the Thyssen Museum.  All 3 are located along the Paseo del Prado and are part of the UNESCO site.

I was so excited to get to the Reina Sofía Museum, for short.  As a matter of fact, it was the #1 thing I was looking forward to on the entire trip.  Why?  Because I would finally be able to fulfill my life’s goal of seeing Picasso’s Guernica (1937).  It’s 1 of the most famous works of art of the 20th century.  He painted it as a reaction to the bombing of the town of Guernica by the forces of Hitler and Mussolini at the request of Franco during the Civil War.  It’s a massive painting at 25 1/2 feet wide and 11 1/2 feet tall.  It’s loaded with symbolism.  The policy has since changed, but when I was there, photographs of the painting were not allowed.  So please do me a favor and take a look at it and read about it here.

Las Ventas

From the Reina Sofía, I took the metro a couple of lines north to a controversial site:  Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas.  Las Ventas for short, it’s Spain’s largest bullring, with a seating capacity of close to 24,000.  Las Ventas, completed in 1929, was built in the Neo-Mudéjar style.  Neo-Mudéjar is a type of Moorish Revival architecture.  It looks back at the architecture of the Iberian peninsula in the centuries before and after the Reconquista.

I had reserved an audio guide tour of Las Ventas.  Perhaps stupidly, I thought it was going to be an archeological tour of the structure.  But for the most part, the audio tour glorified bullfighting.  I was actually upset by the whole thing.

I was glad when I was finished with the tour.

Chueca (and Vicinity)

After my upsetting visit to Las Ventas, I took the metro back towards central Madrid, to the area known as Chueca.  Following the death of Franco, freedom was celebrated throughout Madrid.  What was the run-down area of Chueca became a vibrant center of shopping, dining, and drinking.  It’s now the heart of gay Madrid.

The explorations of Christopher Columbus, of course, made Spain very, very rich and powerful.  This monument was built to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his voyage to what became known as the Americas.  And monumental it is.  The sculpture is 10 feet tall.  The base it sits on is 56 feet tall.

See those concrete blocks in the background of the picture above?  They make up a monument created by Spanish artist Joaquín Vaquero Turcios.  The abstract, engraved blocks, installed in 1977, are part of a dedication to Columbus’s arrival in the New World on behalf of the Spanish.

From Plaza de Pedro Zerolo, it was a very short walk back to my hotel.  I was not feeling great about the 1st day of my trip.  In addition to being upset by my visit to the bullring, I was still a little distressed by how I had totally lost my usually very good sense of direction at El Retiro Park.  But I had dinner with my friend Paco to look forward to.  And things completely turned around on Day 2.

[Factual information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]