International Bright Young Thing

Today we slept until 11am and ready to hit the day with a vengeance. During our breakfast of huevos (eggs) and jamon (ham), Jon and I chatted about the cultural differences between home and Madrid. Wow, we are good consumers in the US. We are all about choices and “have it your way” and here in Madrid it’s just not that way. Just a few choices of beer in the bars, there is not a selection of six kinds of bread with breakfast and you are not presented with three kinds of artificial sweetener on the table. And no free refills. The choice you do have is smoking or, yep you guessed it, smoking. It seems everyone smokes. Everywhere. I have been quickly spoiled by the no smoking ordinance in CO, NY and CA.

With a book by our new best friend, Rick Steves, PBS Travel Guru, we did two walking tours today. This is not, by the way, the same Rick Steves of radio’s “The Weekly Top 40.” The first stop on our walk was Puerta del Sol, Madrid’s central square. This is home to the new year’s celebration in Madrid and home of the first electric billboard in Spain. Nothing like Time’s Square, but bustling with activity—people walking and running from the bus to the metro to shopping. There was even a Sephora here, only much smaller than in the US with much fewer choices. Spain’s first post office is here as is the first city hall. There was a plaque honoring the victims and those who helped on Madrid’s 9/11: March 11, 2004. Very touching. This is also the geographic center of Spain—km zero.





It was then a short walk to Plaza Mayor, which felt like a walk in time. Built in 1619, the plaza is surrounded by uniform buildings. It was here that Spain’s bullfights were held (now they are held in huge stadiums) and also where those guilty of sins were executed. There was a bar here celebrating bull fighting, Torro Bar, that had pretty gruesome painting and photographs and even a collection of bull’s heads. Quite a popular activity. It was here that we decided that we were not going to a bullfight. Ever.

A walk through a few narrow, medieval streets brought us to the Royal Palace, thought by many to be among the most beautiful in the world. It has 2000 rooms and is filled with priceless antiques and gold everywhere. While the royal family now lives in mansion a few miles outside of Madrid, the palace remains the center of royal and official functions. In fact, there was an official function in progress the afternoon we were there, so the palace was closed to the public. We watched for a while with the other curious tourists and saw several official cars exit, but don’t know what was happening. Lots of horses and military-dressed men all standing at attention.

From here, we walked to lunch at the Grand Palace Hotel. We sat on the patio and watched drivers negotiate the (beautiful) traffic circle, complete with a huge fountain in the center. With a statue of a king on a horse. Jon and I are still not in complete understanding of a monocracy, all I know is they have horses and lots of them. We chatted lots about kings and queens. International Bright Young (let me have it) Young Things, indeed.

Our first museum stop in Madrid was the Centro de Arte Renia Sofia. Here in what was Madrid’s first public hospital is a terrific modern art collection. We enjoyed several galleries filled with work by one of my favorite artists, Joan Miro, and also saw one of the greatest works of art in the world. Picasso’s “Gurnica.” Here’s the story we learned: in 1937, the evil dictator Franco permitted Hitler to test out bombs on the village of Gurnica. Hitler’s army blew up the entire village and killed everyone. Picasso captured this scene brilliantly in what is the best anti-war work I’ve ever seen. The painting was exiled to the US for many years and just celebrated its 25th anniversary of being returned back to Spain. Many of us stood transfixed in the horror of the scene. I wondered if there is an artist today capturing the wars in our world right now. Well, other than Green Day. We relaxed in a beautiful sculpture garden before walking back to our hotel. And yes, we napped again.