After our little escape from the heat and smog outside yesterday we did leave our hotel room to find dinner. We first had the Mercado de San Miguel as our destination. I had read that you could find great tapas there. We did go inside, but it was so crowded, and seating would have to be at counters that were so full. Then, to top it off, a young, what appeared to be maybe a teen, boy I walked passed proceeded to throw up. Um … get me outa there! Still the tapas looked mighty fine. I think, though, it is primarily a tourist kind of thing.
Instead of that we just rambled and ended up at Plaza Mayor. Gee, another huge tourist spot. Go figure! But we knew we had to eat somewhere and we are tourists. So okay then. The place had a number of eateries with outdoor seating so we finally just randomly chose one. And it was just fine.
That was it for the day, so back to the hotel we went. I think I slept better than I have since we started this trip. Nice!
This morning it was a twenty or so minute walk to get to the Museo del Prado. It’s our first museum of this trip, which is rather surprising, but we just hadn’t had the inclination to go to them in the other cities. We did walk through Plaza del Sol, but there is so much construction work going on there a photo wouldn’t have been all that great. Ah well.
We got to the museum, picked up our already purchased 10:45 entrance tickets, and then searched out breakfast. We seem to now have a routine: we look a bit, and never choose the first place and rarely the second. I wonder if that will ever change?! I finally had a nice bowl of yogurt with granola, something I’ve been missing. Then it was over to the museum.
No photography is allowed in the museum, so what you see above is just the outside where we enter and the sculpture behind us as we enter. We were in that place for about five hours (and I’m sure Dan could have stayed even longer. I just have to pace myself and sit at times, because my back will start hating me). We did have a small lunch there as well. So much art! So much amazing work! The Bosch (c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) … just crazy stuff! I can’t help but wonder what he was like. We also saw a few Picasso works in the same room as some Goya. Saw “Man with a Clarinet” and I am still searching for the instrument. 😉 We couldn’t see every room: there is just so much there, and the brain does go on overload. (Mine does, anyway.)
One very funny thing: because I have one not-so-great-ear with tinnitus, I think my brain is trying to make sense of some sounds. When we are in environments like a museum, it decides there is music. Today it was something like Gregorian chant much of the time. I entered one room, in fact, and thought “Oh, there is music here!” I thought for sure it was playing on a video that was in that room. But no, just my imagination, wouldn’t you know?
Walking to and from the Prado we passed some buildings we could tell were some sort of government buildings, and there were people standing in front with some mighty large guns. I was a good girl and didn’t misbehave (and didn’t feel comfortable taking a photo) so no shots were fired. The heat and smog were definitely back: 99° and air is ranked “unhealthy”. Thankfully the temps are supposed to go down each day that we are here. The walk home was slower than a walk would be in lower temps, but it seemed to go pretty fast. I suspect it’s because we had the route figured out.
Madrid is very different than the other cities we’ve visited. So many places we’ve been to were just so incredibly clean. No trash at all. Walkways cleaned every day. But this is a big city. This has more trash for sure (yet less graffiti in the areas we’ve seen so far). It just feels grittier to me. I’m not complaining, I promise … just doing the compare and contrast thing.
Now it’s siesta time or (for me), blogging time. Eventually we will go out and do the dinner search again. Maybe we’ll manage to stop at the first place we find. You never know!