Madrid 1

Madrid 1

I'm going 185 miles per hour.  The fastest I've ever gone, except on a plane.  It's definitely the fastest I've ever gone without a seat belt.

After a spectacular sunrise (which reminded me of an equally wonderful sunrise on the last morning of our Panama Canal trip) and a last great meal, we left the ship, got on the bus, left the bus, waited in the railway station's first class lounge for about an hour, and then went downstairs and got on the train.  Abbey said the lounge reminded her of one in the Chicago Amtrak station, where we waited for a few hours while changing trains.  

Our group of 22, who are going with us to Madrid after completing the cruise, have taken up the front car or so of the train. 

The seats are comfortable and spacious, and they recline, as Abbey discovered when the woman in front of her pushed the wrong button and reclined really fast.  Abbey saved her orange juice from disaster.

We left town along the same route we took our first day in Barcelona, on our way to Montserrat.  I got a quick glimpse of those jagged mountains, and then we were by them.  The suburbs ran out, and we're in the countryside – farms, small towns with a steeple in the middle, lots of empty land.  The occasional ruin sticking up at the top of a hill.

We were scheduled for a brief stop (“please don't leave your seats”} early on.  It was just wheat out the window when we stopped – just like when we took the Amtrak to Montreal from Albany, and stopped in the middle of nowhere to show the Canadian border officials our passports.  No idea what this “brief scheduled stop” was about.  It was maybe a minute, and we were on our way.

Oops – more mystery.  That stop was not scheduled.  The scheduled stop is Zaragoza-Delicias, a city on our route.  The station, like the one in Barcelona, is new-ish, clean and the design is very sparse.  You get up to street level here using extra-long moving walkways that travel upwards at a very gentle angle.

The ride is fairly smooth (unless you're operating a mouse), with a very little sway from side to side, and some minor vibration.  Right now what we see outside is a lot like the dunelands on the Outer Cape – sparse vegetation on sand-colored land, but it's apparently well-eroded sandstone.  And, incredibly, a lot of agriculture is going on in what looks like a desert wasteland.  Long narrow fields; some have just been harvested, some harrowed to prepare for next year and some are, impossibly, green.  Can't tell what's growing there.

Much of the trip has been in fog – sometimes pretty thick:  nothing out the window except the embankment.

It's getting hillier/more mountainous.  Narrow roads winding up the valleys.  Still foggy.  The temperature has gone from 19C (66F)in Barcelona to 10C (50F).  Hope it's warmer in Madrid.  And now back to a rugged, hilly landscape.  Still arid.

It doesn't feel like we're going two or three times faster than any train I've been on.  Fast, but not a blur. [Abbey:  I watched out the window for a while, then started to read. I found out that at 185mph you can get feeling carsick faster! We got fed mediocre lunch, and then I napped.]

Nearing Madrid:  solar arrays; mountains in the distance; more trees, but small and spaced apart, or in clusters.  Temp has risen to 16C.  A small town, and a big agricultural installation.  Greener.  Fields again.  

Madrid came upon us pretty quickly – no a lot of suburban sprawl (none, actually).  An area of small, primitive houses with lots of small gardens and livestock pens, and then were were surrounded by apartment blocks and grafitti.  Then the station.  Madrid is six times bigger than Barcelona, but Barcelona has extensive, developed suburbs, at least in the direction we took.  Madrid happened pretty quick.

Off the train, into the station, which is very spare and uninteresting, onto the bus, and a short drive to the hotel.  As Abbey noted, it's a nice hotel on the main street of Madrid, the Paseo de Recoletos.  [We found out Sunday that the street actually changes names 3 times. At the hotel  we are on Paseo de la Castellana.] We're right in the hustle and bustle of downtown, toward the northern end of town; the Prado Museum is on the same road, three kilometers south, still in the center city.  

We drove past a Christmas Market set up for nearly a kilometer along the sidewalk bordering the Paseo de Recoletos.  I've been reading a lot about Madrid Christmas Markets (I get up around 5AM; we eat breakfast round 8-9AM) and this one is for handcrafts.  And apparently not the largest one.  Depending on what we do tomorrow (Sunday) we will or will not make it to any of them.

We also drove by the Palacio de Cibeles, an aggressive confection of architectural wish-fulfillment, at a major intersection

near the Prado, an intersection which contains the Fuente (Fountain) de Cibeles (Cybele was the Roman goddess of nature and fertility, or one of them anyway).  It is, incredibly, only a little more than a hundred years old; it started out as Madrid's Post Office and telecommunications center (when telecommunications mostly meant telegraph); it was an apartment building after that, and in 2007 became the Town Hall.  Whenever the Real Madrid soccer team wins a title, there is a parade through the city that ends in Plaza del Cibeles, where the team captain performs the ritual of draping a Real Madrid flag and scarf around the statue of the goddess.  Our picture is from out of the bus window, so it doesn't capture the full ferocity of the architecture;  better picture is below.

Orientation by Viking staff at the hotel – maps, lists, schedules, etc. - and up to the room to get organized.

[Abbey -After the sparse look and fake wood of the ship (even Holland American is nicer) the 5 star hotel we are in is gorgeous. All kinds of marble in the floors and walls, even in the bathroom and elevators. I get to sleep on a soft bed with down pillows. And our window faces one of the main streets of Madrid. 9 lanes across. Soooo noisy!!!]

The museum we really wanted to see – the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, a short walk from the hotel – closes at 3PM on weekends.  So too late for today.  We got some info from the Viking lady, and just started walking around the neighborhood.

Another active, vibrant city.  Lots of people on the broad sidewalks – mostly young people and families, it seemed.  Lots of cafes and restaurants (and a Tim Horton's), some of them very high-end.  Architecture is all over the place, from old and interesting to (mostly) new and (often) interesting, like the modern building whose top five floors seemed to be floating on air..  

There is a sound and feel to a city like this – a background hum, a vibration; the air feels different.  I really like being in, specifically, this kind of city.  Straight, uncomplicated, straightforward streets (looking at you, Boston), a comprehensible landscape that one can inhabit without being overwhelmed.  When I was in High School and home on visits from college, I used to take the train into Manhattan and just walk around for a day.  Sometimes I'd go in with my parents, who would spend the day working on genealogy at the NY Public Library, and I'd wander, looking at buildings and just – being – in the city.  Hard to describe, but I felt comfortable and happy in the city.  Not (just) because of the architecture, which I wrote about the other day, but just to be in the midst of something so alive.  There was something of this feeling this evening in Madrid – that tiny section that we explored.

El Yate menu

We read about a million menus outside restaurants, and ended up back at the restaurant we heard about at the hotel – they didn't recommend restaurants, but the Viking lady pointed out that it served food all day, as opposed to those restaurants that opened later, since Madriellenos (and most Europeans?) eat dinner later (see Cadiz).  The restaurant's name is El Yate – which is The Yacht in English.  I have an attitude about yachts and people who spend their endless money on them, but we went in anyway.  

Just about all the restaurants we had passed (many of which had outdoor seating) were packed and noisy, people having a good time (including outside – it was about 60F).  The Yacht has a semi-enclosed, long, narrow seating section along the sidewalk, and it was jammed with young men at one long table, like a raucous Last Supper, having a great time.  It was the same inside, and I found the mood infections.  For the first time in a long time, I wanted to be part of a large group of people having a noisy good time.

We had a good time; the waiter was cheerful and good natured; he had a little English, we had a little Spanish, so we agreed that we'd make it work.  We had four tapas, which we shared – the two I ordered were so good I didn't want to share (but I did).  Fried and breaded mushrooms with aoili sauce, and pork medallions on toast with caramelized onions and a slab of brie.  I had a glass of red house wine, Abbey had a Coke with lemon.  And she had eggplant with molasses!  Remember?  It's true – and it's good.  Reminded me of french toast – we ate a few and left the rest til last – dessert.  Her other dish was a beef concoction. [Abbey - open face sandwich- Solomillo de ternera, foie y Pedro Ximenez Veal sirloin, foie paté and a reduction of Pedro Ximenez wine ]

A really good dinner – we were full enough to decide against actual dessert (cranberry cheesecake!).  Back to the hotel; Abbey did another painting; I was too tired to write (I'm continuing the next morning), so I read my Richard Russo novel set on Cape Cod.

Tomorrow – tour of Madrid, and the Prado!  Stay tuned.

El Palacio de Cibeles