Day 21: July 4 (Madrid)

It is the 4th of July! Fireworks back home. The final day of our trip here.  We got up around 10 am and went around the corner to get coffee.  The museum we had planned on visiting today, Thyssen-Bornemisza, is closed on Mondays, so we opted for the Sofia Reina instead.  The Sofia Reina is the Modern Art Museum.  The square it faces was the first place we wandered when we first arrived in Spain three weeks ago!

After reloading on tape for my feet at a Farmacia, we walked along the route we took several days ago to the Prado, down the Paseo del Prado and over to the Reina Sofia.  The Prado was also closed today, so (I think) there were more people at the Reina Sofia than usual.  There was a line of people stretching out the front when we got there.  It took us about ten minutes to get in, one of the longer lines we've been in. The people behind us were having a long conversation, the man never stopped talking and Neil and I felt ever so close to actually being able to understand him.

Garden Courtyard of Reina Sofia

Modern Wing of Reina Sofia

We started out in a beautiful inner courtyard park featuring a big Calder, relaxing on a bench and plotting our course. We spent a couple of hours in the exhibit rooms on the second floor,  looking at art from 1900-1945ish.  There were many, many Picassos, including Guernica.  Neil and I both liked several beautiful portraits of women by Dali. We had lunch in the cafeteria.  There was an attached restaurant but it was very tony.  The wing which housed the cafeteria was very modern, with a nice courtyard with a sculpture.  One side of the courtyard was the library.  The cafeteria was very contemporary in design with lots of red / orange furniture and seating.  Neil asked for a "jabon" (soap, instead of "jamon", ham) sandwich by accident, but, luckily, none were available.  We had a wild discussion of the modern art "racket" over lunch before heading back.  We had a lot of fun going through one of the temporary exhibits which was a retrospective of the work of a Japanese woman who worked mostly in the US in the 60s and 70s.  She was in the middle of the New York, Warhol scene.  There were pictures of "happenings" she produced with lots of naked bodies.  There was furniture upholstered with penises.  There were rooms with huge red and white polka-dot spheres.  We especially liked walking through a black light lit living room with multi-colored dots and a room dark except for strands of changing colored lights and mirrors.

Black Light with Dots

Colored Lights and Mirrors

We also saw "dumb stuff".

Crystal Palace

After the museum, we had a pleasant walk back through Retiro Park - another return to our first day in Spain.  We sat and relaxed in the Park near the Crystal Palace, visited the boating pond, and continued through to Plaza Cibeles.  We had only seen Plaza Cibeles through the window of the airporter bus that had brought us into Madrid after arriving in Spain.  The Plaza is lined by huge government buildings with a large fountain on a roundabout in the middle.  We continued down Gran Via and cut through on a road to Puerta del Sol.  This road was a busy pedestrian walkway where we saw very obvious prostitutes right across from the police station.

We got back and rested and showered.  We headed over to Mercado San Miguel a little early, planning on buying stuff and sitting down and ordering drinks.  It was, however, way too crowded for us to carry out that plan so we sat at Cerveceria La Plaza outside.  This is the place we did not eat last night because it was too dark to read the menu.  The food was very good.  I tried the Iberica ham as a tap because I had seen it listed and because it is very expensive.  It turned out to be the same tapa we had been served for free with water in Toledo.  We had a very good Ensalada Nueces which we hope to try to replicate at home.  It was iceberg lettuce, Granny Smith apples, walnuts, hardboiled egg whites, white mushrooms (not many) and a vinaigrette that had mustard and a bit of sugar.  We also had very good revueltas with ham and some chantrelles.  I had two tintos veranos.  We thought about visiting the Mercado for a sweet to top off our meal, but decided against it because we had splurged on a piece of chocolate cake at the museum for lunch.  Neil did get an ice cream on the way back to the hotel, trying rum raisin instead of his usual dulce de leche.

Back to the hotel to pack! Tomorrow is a long trip back home.