The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
Madrid Day 3. I got up fairly late again and went for breakfast at the nearby Cafe de Principe, situated somewhere between the hostale and Puerta del Sol. Breakfast consisted of churros and chocolate, surely the greatest invention known to man, as a cup of chocolate in Madrid is pretty much advertised, and is thick and gooey and delicious. Anywhere else in the world, this would just be chocolate sauce (or runny pudding). In Madrid, you can just drink it. Or dip your churros into it. Either way, yum.
After this, I headed over to the Prado, one of Europe's largest art collections, all in one gi-normous building. Much of the outside of the Prado is dug up for construction, as they're building an extension to the building almost entirely underground. The inside, though, is amazing. Even if your taste in art runs to impressionism or modern art, it's hard not to appreciate room after room of older masterpieces for the bargain price of 3 euros. The highlight of the Prado is supposed to be Velazquez' masterpiece, Las Meninas, which you can certainly make an argument for, though it's pretty hard to walk away from Goya's black paintings, which were painted on the walls of his house and only survived because some enterprising people had them transferred to canvas after his death. How? I don't know, but they're amazing all the same. You can have a look at the official Prado website in English here. Anyway, a lot of time can be spent there, oohing and aahing over a whole lot of art. I discovered a whole school of new favourites called the tenebrists, who liked to do really contrasty paintings, usually painting central figures illuminated by one source of light, which left much of the rest of the picture in the dark. Caravaggio was the first tenebrist and he spent a lot of time in Spain, which influenced a whole lot of artists, like Zurbaran, Murillo, and Ribera, to emulate him. Have a look at Caravaggio's David Victorious over Goliath to see what I mean.
Populationwise, Madrid is only about twice the size of Toronto, and while it's got a whole lot of history on its side, its museums make Toronto's look... well... kind of sad.
After the Prado, I headed over to the bus station to take a trip to the nearby village of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, which contains the huge monastery of El Escorial, which, again, is a bit swankier than you would expect the typical monastery to be. This place was also sort of a royal retreat, and contains not only the crypts of past kings, but also the crypts of past infantes and infantas, the creepiest bit being the really strange, geometrically mad monument where the children are buried. The audioguide for the place actually just reads out the names of each person in each room, but for this section, it also featured a somewhat disturbing recording of children crying, the sort of effect that's really unnecessary when you're wandering around in a dark tomb. The crypt of the kings and queens is particularly ridiculous, a huge marble and gold monstrosity that's sure to awe the most skeptical of visitors, which is the point, I guess. The funny thing is that while this crypt was built to last into the next ice age, the place has almost run out of room, and will soon be entirely full, with the addition of the remains of the current king's parents who never got to rule and spent their lives in exile. I suppose a nice tomb is some consolation, though probably not much. The one room we didn't get to see was the rotting room, where apparently the royal remains are laid out until sufficiently decomposed. Bummer.
El Escorial also features a monstrosity of a cathedral, an almost ridiculously large and dark grey stone building made to put the fear of god into anyone fool enough to enter. Being raised half-Orthodox, half-protestant, and mostly uninterested, I found the place kind of... well... silly, though it probably could have stood in for several scenes in the Lord of the Rings. Anything tall, dark and gothicky.
After that, I headed back to Madrid for a lovely evening meal and rounded off the night at the Arco de Cuchilleros, a flamenco bar near the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Personally, I don't know quality flamenco from a hole in the ground, but I had a good time and I thought the dancers were pretty good. We came up with the theory that since flamenco meant Flemish, that perhaps that was what the Spanish wanted to do to the Flemish... i.e. stamp on them until they are dead. The idea was borne out by the entrance of a group of really drunk and obnoxious men, who may or may not have been Flemish, but at least spoke Dutch.
Anyway, that night I went to bed dead tired and extremely happy to see my pillow.
Coming soon: Scenic Seville! Madrid's other huge art museum! Shopping! Alleen goes home! posted by Alleen at 9:45:57 AM
Thursday, October 31, 2002
Oh my god. Is there anything funnier than Frank Sinatra singing The Girl from Ipanema?
Antonio Carlos Jobim you great big whore. posted by Alleen at 11:09:04 AM
Happy Halloween!
I was going to write a scary story or something, but it's actually a pretty nice day in the Netherlands right now and I'm enjoying the small amount of sun we're going to get today so I have nothing scary to write.
Sigh. They don't even celebrate Halloween here, though I have the feeling that every Dutch story starts with "It was a dark and stormy night..."
It's the rainy season here. It differs from the non-rainy season only in the addition of gale force winds to the constant rain. Fun.
But enough whining. Let's talk about Madrid, where the weather is beautiful.
My first day in Madrid started off with what I do every time I get to a new place and that is get completely lost while searching for accomodation. Spain has a lot of hostels, but they also have another budget option called a hostale, which basically means you get put up in a little room in a family-run sort of hotel. My particular hostale had one public telephone, only one room with a bathroom and teeny poky rooms in what looked like someone's converted apartment. That said, it was actually fairly nice, well situated, pretty cheap, and the proprieter was pretty cool. Upon getting there and checking in (which basically consisted of a whole lot of waving of arms and my three words of Spanish spoken over and over), I went out for a walk to the Puerta del Sol, which is considered to be the very heart of Madrid. Surprisingly, it was about three minutes' walk away. The Puerta del Sol is basically the intersection of something like seven streets, with a bit of a square in the middle. It also has a large statue of a man on a horse (as with most squares in Madrid, it seems) and the symbol of Madrid, a statue of a bear picking strawberries from a tree. Stupid bear; strawberries don't grow on trees. Many of Madrid's bigger shopping streets start at the Puerta del Sol, but I opted to go instead to a convent.
The Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, known as the Convent of the Barefoot Nuns, was founded by the widowed queen Juana of Austria, who went mad when her husband died and decided to found a convent. Since the convent ended up being basically for the purpose of housing widowed female royalty and those of the aristocracy who chose to become nuns, it's a pretty swank place, as much as we could see of it anyway. Every square inch of this place is decorated with either murals or devotional paintings or bizarre statues of saints set into niches and in small chapels (there was even a stature of Jesus lying down post-crucifiction with a great big hole in his side, which was frankly disturbing). It had a beautiful courtyard and big archways and a flagstone floor. Pretty nice. Made me kind of curious as to what kind of convents poor nuns ended up in. You can only get in with a guided tour for some reason, which is a bit of a downer as the guided tour only comes in Spanish and they zip you right through it. At the end, the tour guide shooed us all out, yelling "Vamos" the whole time. The only thing I got out of this tour (aside from getting to look around the place) was that flamenco meant flemish, as the tour guide did a short explanation in English upon entering the rooms with the Flemish paintings (which included a Rubens--I guess royal widows can't contemplate heaven with crappy paintings) and then proceeded to translate this into Spanish. The convent's highlight was supposed to be an amazing collection of tapestries, which were sadly being restored, and which I was just as pleased to miss. For me, the highlight was a small Titian portrait of Jesus, which I've seen in reproduction since and definitely doesn't look as cool. I had about four seconds to look at it until the tour guide vamos-ed me out. Anyway, have a look at the Titian here, though I warn you, it doesn't look as cool. It's the one on the right.
Following this, I returned to the hostale for a nap, and upon waking went out for a walk. I decided to have a look at Madrid's major attractions at night which was pretty cool. I started out at the Puerta del Sol again and made my way over to the Plaza Mayor. The Plaza Mayor is supposed to be Madrid's most famous square and not surprisingly features a dude on a horse in the middle. One side is dominated by a building that is entirely painted with anatomically warped naked women, which was kind of fun to look at, though mildly disturbing as several of the women appeared to have a six-pack and be pregnant at the same time. We also went to the Palacio Real, Madrid's ridiculously large royal palace, which looked downright creepy at night. The Palacio Real is flanked by a large cathedral on one side, which was only slightly less ridiculously sized. Following a ramble down the Gran Via, a street with a disproportionate number of large, palace-like historic buildings, it was bedtime again.
The next morning started late with a trip to the Palacio Real to see the inside. The ridiculous grandeur is continued on the inside which is covered with huge ornate furniture, frescoes upon frescoes, statues, massive chandeliers, marble floors, and damask drapes. The tour ended with a whimper at the royal knick knack rooms where you can ooh and aah at the royal silverware and porcelain. Along the way, it took in a huge amount of art, a large number of royal sitting rooms, some fairly bizarre theme rooms and funnest of all, the royal Stradivarius's, of which there are five. This was followed by a quick trip to the Royal Armoury, where I got yelled at for using a flash (which I still maintain I didn't) and a wander around the palace grounds, which were beyond relaxing, though not to the woman who attempted to meditate at the pond and was unceremoniously kicked out because they thought she was going to sleep there.
After stopping for lunch, I decided to head in the general direction of the Prado and the nearby Parque del Buen Retiro. What I didn't realise was that since October doesn't see a lot of tourism, and it's also the month with the most reasonably climate, the people of Madrid tend to do much of their building and renovation then. A great big chunk of this park was dug up, including the huge monument to whoever (I couldn't get close enough to see) that was sitting in the middle. Thankfully, there were many quieter areas, including the area around the statue called El Angel Caido, apparently one of the first statues of the devil (or more likely, one of the first statues of the devil to be put up in a state-run park). Madrilenos like to celebrate this statue and the general tranquility of the park by making out in every possible corner. It's kind of sweet.
As it was getting fairly late at this point, dinner was next on the menu, at a little place in the Plaza Santa Ana, near the Hostale. Tiredness overtook me there, and by 10pm, I was out cold.
Soon to come... Alleen goes to the Prado! Scenic Seville! San Lorenzo de El Escorial! Flamenco!
Holy shit, dude. When they say "gale force winds" in the Netherlands, they're not fucking around. Today my plane landed amid much turbulence and twitchy green-faced passengers in what was described as a "gale force wind." After waiting an hour for my backpack to come out of the baggage thingamabob, I learned that my train had been cancelled and no more trains would be leaving in the foreseeable future, as "gale force winds" had knocked debris onto the track and blocked it. I eventually made it home by taking the most circuitous route possible, ending up in Duivendrecht, then Utrecht, then Den Haag, as this was the only route that was unblocked. My plane landed at 9:30am and I made it home at 1:15pm, dogged by "gale force winds" the whole time.
Dang. Anyway, more about my trip later. posted by Alleen at 1:31:10 PM
