Second Time Madrid

 

Puerta del Sol, day time

 
October 23-26, 2015: My first visit to Madrid, I toured the Royal Palace, the Prado, and Reina Sofia, enjoyed a flamenco performance, and tried to stay cool in the Botanical Gardens before boarding a night train to Ronda. Ever since, I’ve used Madrid as an example of a city that others love and I don’t. I usually contrast it with Lisbon, a city I loved at first sight. But there are plenty of cities I don’t love at first sight, but nonetheless enjoy. It occurred to me that after a decade of putting Madrid down, perhaps I should give it a second look. Maybe I’d like it better in cooler weather. I wouldn’t revisit the sights I had already seen, but Madrid had plenty of museums. Just in case, I allocated only three nights.

Back when I was planning a trip to South America I spent some time trying to learn a little Spanish using a BBC video course (yes, I know the accent is different). I didn’t learn much Spanish, but I did like the look of the Puerta del Sol and the Madrid metro, and I booked a room at the Hotel Europa, practically on the Puerta del Sol, instead of the Hotel Plaza Mayor where I stayed in 2004. I can only conclude that the BBC shot the video very early in the morning, because the square turned out to be tourist central, and both it and the street outside the hotel were mobbed, as was the metro. My hotel room, small and worn, did have a little balcony overlooking a slice of the square, and I did enjoy watching the crowds, but I had no interest in joining them.

 

Puerta del Sol, night time

  

Street outside my hotel

 My first afternoon was not a success. After I got off the train from Salamanca I decided I would be better off taking the Cercanias commuter train to Puerta del Sol as the queues for the ticket machines for the metro were much longer. Ticket in hand, I had to wait for the platform for my train to show up on the monitor, and then had only two minutes to get there. The train itself was packed to overflowing. After I checked in and set off for the first museum on my list, I found the metro to be just as overcrowded. And the Anthropology Museum was a total waste of time. True, wandering past a row of second-hand book stalls in the direction of the Botanical Gardens, I did happen on the Caixa Forum, which was probably the most interesting building I saw in Madrid, but much of the exhibition space was closed.

  
The museum scene did improve over the next two days (I’ll do a separate post for them). I did enjoy the Retiro Park, with its lake, its Crystal Palace and its Velasquez Palace decorated with colorful tiles. I did eat quite well, although one of the best meals was at a South American restaurant. But I did not change my opinion of Madrid. 

Possibly I would have liked Madrid better if I had been staying somewhere quieter. Although that would not, it turned out, have been Plaza Mayor, which I visited one evening, only to find it full of tourist-trap cafes. One or two other squares, recommended in my guide books, seemed to be in rather seedy areas. A walk down Gran Via, which one book claimed had interesting early 20th century buildings, also disappointed. I had my camera out, but the only building that seemed worth a shot was a Best Western hotel with a mural of a Spanish shawl.

I had originally intended to finish my trip in Madrid, flying home on Icelandair with a stopover in Reykjavik, but when I got around to trying to book the flights, I discovered that Icelandair only offered that route in the summer. Flights from Madrid to the US at the end of October were, for some reason, ridiculously expensive, and trying frequent miles didn’t turn up any routings I liked. I found better options out of Barcelona, and decided it was time to see how Sagrada Familia was coming along. I hadn’t been over enthused about Barcelona either in 2004, but Gaudi was a definite draw.