City – Spain 2013

Madrid, Day 1

Jul 252013

After a three hour layover in Frankfurt we finally arrived in Madrid. The runway ends at the Iberia Airline terminal, but Lufthansa shares a terminal somewhere else in Spain – we taxied for so long we thought he might be dropping us off at the hotel. Sadly, we ended up having to deplane and grab a cab.

Arrival in Madrid. I think the runway is on the other side of the hill in the distance.

We’re staying at the NH Palacio De Tepa, a short walk from Plaza Mayor and next to Plaza Santa Ana. We opted for a room with a beautiful wooden ceiling and skylight as opposed to a street view, assuming it would be quieter at four in the morning when everyone was going home. That turned out to be a good call on our part.

Madrid hotel room.

After checking in we took a short walk around Plaza Mayor and the surrounding streets before returning for a dinner of tapas, sangria and beer in Plaza Santa Ana next to the hotel.

Jamon y melon.

Sangria. In a Heineken glass.

Sarah was feeling jet lagged, so she went back to the hotel and crashed. I grabbed my camera and made a tourist loop of Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor. The city was coming alive with people and warm evening light. Ham, street performers, protesters, and ice cream kept me alert until about 10pm when my brain finally went into a fog. Time to sleep.

Jamon at Museo de Jamon.

Street protesters with live music in Puerta del Sol.

Helado.

Street artists in Plaza Mayor.

Madrid, Day 2

July 26, Madrid No Responses »

Jul 262013

Our first full day in Madrid began with an 11am bike tour of the city. We were the only people scheduled, so it was essentially a private tour. Our guide, Joop, was Dutch, but he’d done his homework about the city – entertaining us with stories about its history and anecdotes about the artifacts. The tour was three hours long, and we covered about 12 miles. The map below is a track recorded on my GPS.

Madrid bike tour route.

Our first stop was in Plaza Dos de Mayo where we learned about the uprising of the people of Madrid against Napoleon’s troops.

Plaza Dos de Mayo. Luis Daoíz de Torres and Pedro Velarde y Santillán are commemorated in a statue as officers who led their troops against the French on that day.

In Parque de Oeste is an ancient Egyptian temple that was going to be flooded in the 1960s by the Great Dam of Aswan. Egypt donated it to Spain, shipping and assembly not included.

Templo de Debod

In the Plaza de Oriente, in front of the Queen’s Palace, is a statue of Filipe IV. The king wanted his statue to have a horse on two legs (like a painting by Diego Velázquez) so he could look powerful, but he didn’t want a rod under the horse to hold it up like everyone else’s statues of horses on two legs. This was quite a challenge in the 17th century for the sculptor Pietro Tacca, so he called up Galileo for some advice. Galileo was inventing physics at the time and could do the math. He told him to keep the bronze statue hollow, but fill the back of the horse with iron. Voilà, a standing horse just like the king pictured it.

Filipe IV

From there we pedaled through Plaza Mayor and the arts district before arriving at the Museo del Prado, which we’ll visit inside later on the trip. Joop took us on a beautiful ride through the botanical gardens and Parque del Retiro – Madrid’s equivalent to Central Park. One stop included the statue of the Fallen Angel (“Monumento del Ángel Caído”), originally created for the 1878 Exposition in Paris. In 1885 it was installed in the park – many people felt it inappropriate to put a statue of Satan in a park in highly Catholic Madrid. To make it even more controversial, they built up the highest hill in the park so that the statue would be at 666 meters above sea level.

London had a Crystal Palace in 1851 for its Great Exhibition, and in 1887 Madrid got one of their own. It originally was planned to be a temporary structure to exhibit Philippine plants, but it still stands today for displaying art exhibits from the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia.

Palacio de Cristal

On the final leg of our bike tour we stopped at the Puerta de Alcalá. In the late 1700s King Charles III held a competition to design a more impressive gate to the city. After turning down all the submitted designs he commissioned Francesco Sabatini, who, hip to the fact that the king was hard to please, turned in only two proposals. The king loved both of them and did an 18th century mashup – approaching from the east you see one design and approaching from the west you see the other.

Puerta de Alcalá

Better that the gates, though, was Joop’s story about the gypsies there. They will offer you a rosemary branch, and if you take it they will grab your hand and read your palm. If you don’t pay them well for the reading you may end up like Joop with a gypsy curse on you – perhaps manifested as a car crash two days later in the mountains. His advice: if a gypsy curses you, send the curse back instantly with “¡Mismo para ti!”

After the bike ride we chose the wrong cafe for lunch, but found ice cream afterwards to make everything better. Finally it was time for a Spanish tradition: the siesta. What a great idea.

After our respite we wandered around on our own, stopping at Mercado de San Miguel, one of the beautiful food markets in Madrid. We had tapas in Plaza Mayor, which may not be the best food in town, but made for great people watching. Straight from there we went to dinner at Restaurante Botin, famous for their roast sucking pig. Though the afternoon nap was great, we were filled with rich food and still a bit jet-lagged so we passed on another of Madrid’s late nights.

Restaurante Botin, seen from atop the steps in Plaza Mayor.

Madrid, Day 3

July 27, Madrid No Responses »

Jul 272013

Our last day in Madrid has been set aside for the art museums. We have to be on a train to Seville at 5pm, so we got an early start to be at the Museo del Prado when it opened – unfortunately we thought it opened at 9am instead of 10am and missed out on an extra hour of sleep. The morning walk from the hotel was beautiful along narrow streets before the city got moving.

Down the street from our hotel before Madrid woke up.

Diego Velázquez is one of Spain’s most famous artists and is honored with a statue in front of the museum.

Diego Velázquez in front of Museo del Prado.

We had time to kill before the museum opened, so Sarah and I played around shooting portraits with my 50mm lens.

Sarah in front of Museo del Prado.

Carl in front of Museo del Prado.

Photography inside the museum was forbidden, so I don’t have anything to show here. My personal favorites were works by Claude Lorrain, the one piece by Caravaggio and all the works he inspired by Boneri, Ribera, LaTour and Velázquez. We grabbed a quick lunch in the cafe at the museum and then walked to the modern art museum, Museo Reina Sofia, stopping along the way to watch a group of bicyclists playing around in a small plaza.

A mass of bike riders practicing tricks in front of Museo Reina Sofia.

Neither Sarah nor I were as captivated by the work in Museo Reina Sofia as we were in Museo del Prado, so we moved through the museum rather quickly – our primary goal was to visit Picasso’s Guernica. The piece was fascinating to see, its mural-sized scale makes a much greater impact than a photo in a book or online. Even more interesting though was a refresher on the impact the painting has made around the world as a statement about war.

There is a lot of graffiti in Madrid. Most of the small shops roll down doors when they are closed, and many have custom paint jobs to advertise or make a statement of their own. Those that don’t have artwork are severely abused by taggers, but good original art is usually left alone. Not all shop owners are so lucky:

Painted roll-down storefront with graffiti.

An alternative is to have a cow guard your shop.

This cow sold neither ale nor hops.

Our next stop is Seville via high speed rail. I love the trains in Europe – two and a half hours in a comfortable chair with a changing view, extremely smooth and surprisingly quiet. I worked on processing pictures from the trip while Sarah read.

The high speed train between Madrid and Seville peaked at about 170 mph.

Us in a train window at the Seville train station.

We grabbed a cab to our hotel near Alameda de Hercules, unpacked, and grabbed tapas for dinner nearby. Tomorrow we set out on bikes once again to learn about the city.

Seville, Day 1, Part 1

July 28, Seville No Responses »

Jul 282013

When we planned our trip to Spain I don’t think we realized how extensive and important the history of Seville is. It is a fascinating city that deserved more than one full day to explore and learn about. We began our adventure walking to the Plaza del Triunfo – a small plaza between the Seville Cathedral and the Alcázar. Also abutting the plaza is an archive containing all the original documents from Columbus and other Spanish explorers who sailed from Seville. It was in this plaza that we would connect with Luis, our bicycle tour guide for the morning.

The Seville Cathedral bell tower, seen from Plaza del Triunfo.

Waiting for our bike tour guide in Plaza del Triunfo, another tourist was happy to take our picture for us.

Luis was easy to spot in his bright red shirt and white fedora, walking with a bike and smiling like he already knew us well. After our introductions, he guided us on foot to a small plaza with a bike shop to pick up our rides. Our small-wheeled bikes were perfect for navigating the narrow “streets” of Seville, they could turn easily and travel slowly among the pedestrians. The little bell mounted on the handle bar of my bike was partially broken, so it rang itself every time I hit a bump, which was quite often on the cobblestone streets in the old part of town. Perhaps it was their way of automatically warning others that distracted tourists were coming through.

Luis, our bike tour guide, showing us why a bike is the best vehicle in Seville.

The two and a half hour tour started in the old part of town (Barrio de Santa Cruz), traveled through the Plaza de España, through the gardens, up the river front and back through the Triana district.

Seville bike tour route.

There were plenty of stops along the way where Luis would tell us about the history of Seville mixed with stories of contemporary life in the city. One stop was at Iglesia del Salvador, a stunning piece of baroque architecture built on top of a Mosque built on Roman ruins. The inside was incredible to see, but the architecture on the outside captivated us as well.

The Moors used found materials for part of their constructions. Here, old Roman columns are used as supports for arches. Spaniards later did the same, using the old Moor arches as part of newer buildings. This is located in a small plaza outside Iglesia del Salvador.

A few stops later brought us to Plaza de España, which was built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition and modeled after the Queen’s palace on Naboo, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I’m not sure how they got the plans.

Seriously, though, it was beautiful. Luis didn’t even mention the Star Wars part, I found that out later when I Google’d the location and saw “plaza de espana seville star wars” was a popular search term. Had to click on that, right?

In the shot below you can see one of the trusty bikes they gave us.

Stopping at Plaza de España to enjoy the view of Naboo.

Plaza de España.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures during the ride – I was usually busy trying to not hit pedestrians when they jumped in random directions from my self-ringing warning bell. My favorite parts of the tour were though the old town and the large Parque de Maria Luisa, across from the Plaza de España.

The Guadalquivir river made Seville a busy port in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries, it was 50 miles upstream from the Atlantic and thus a safer place to unload your riches and spices from sailing the world. The ride up the river to see the site of the 1992 Expo was interesting because of the giant tower built for the expo to show off Schindler elevators – most of what you see are the stairs going up the side of it – otherwise that part of the tour was rather industrial and not Seville’s best side.

Seville – Day 1, Part 2

July 28, Seville No Responses »

Jul 282013

The Alcázar was the next stop after our bike tour. The royal palace is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a beautiful combination of Moorish and more modern architecture.

The Courtyard of the Maidens in the Alcázar.

Photos of us outside the walls of the Alcázar.

Exhausted from the ride and walking tour, we could barely hear the calling of paella from nearby Plaza de Dona Elvira. We sat at a table outside in the shade, enjoying live music from a roaming guitarist while watching kids and dogs play with water from the center fountain. The hearty meal, along with plenty of water and a beer, was enough to get us going again.