Trip to Madrid, in brief (sorta)

What a nice week I’ve had!  Madrid is a wonderful, beautiful city, and Toledo is charming as well.  I arrived early Tuesday morning, after a long, restless night on the train.  I enjoyed the novelty of riding on a sleeper train, and my trip back to France on Saturday night went more smoothly - I didn’t wake up quite as much - but I think that I much prefer riding on trains while upright.  As strange as this may sound, it’s the motion that is the most distracting for me; the rocking side-to-side motion that is so soothing to me when I’m sitting up on a train is changed into a difficult head-to-feet rocking when lying down.  At least, it was on these two trains, simply because of the way that they were laid out - perhaps there are other sleeper trains that are arranged so that the beds run parallel with the forward motion of the train, not perpendicular to it.

The biggest adjustment that I had to make was that of timing.  Spain simply runs about two hours later than anywhere else I’ve lived.  Shops don’t open until 10(ish - everything is Spain seems to run on the “ish” schedule), lunch is from 2-4 p.m., the “afternoon” doesn’t begin until after 4 p.m., and people regularly meet at 10 p.m. for after-dinner (or with-dinner) coffee with their friends.  I went to a club on Halloween night, or rather, All Saints’ Day morning, and didn’t leave for the club until 2 a.m.  I got back to my room at 5 a.m., and as I walked out of the club and past the entrance to a few other clubs, there were still people waiting in line to *enter*!

I passed my days mostly in doing lots of nothing in particular.  I did visit the Prado on Wednesday morning, and was fairly impressed.  I must admit that I still prefer the Louvre, but that has a great deal to do with my personal taste in art.  I tend to prefer Italian or English painters, and am not really that fond of either Goya or “El Greco,” two painters of which Spain is justifiably proud; hence, the Prado, with its emphasis on Spanish painters, didn’t hold as much for me as it might have.  And I must say, Goya’s Pinturas Negras are highly disturbing.  Why anyone would have wanted to paint those things on the walls of his house, where he would have to look at them every day, is beyond me. 

The Retiro (in full, the Parque del Buen Retiro) is huge and lovely and I could easily have spent longer than the three or so hours in total that I spent there.  It has all the things I’ve come to expect of a good European park - one or two monuments, a slew of sculptures and fountains, one or more ponds, amiable-looking old people sitting on the parks soaking up the sun, a few homeless people sleeping amid their rags and rubble under a tree, children trying to hug pigeons that are distinctly infant-phobic…  I went to the Retiro on Wednesday and saw the Crystal Palace and the big-multiply-columned-monument-thingy, and returned on Saturday simply to sit and enjoy the glorious autumn weather before returning to the rain and freezing temperatures of France.

Olga and I went to Toledo on Friday on a rather last minute decision.  It was raining, windy and very cold when we first arrived, and we were not looking forward to a day spent in that weather.  Fortunately, the rain cleared up and although it remained very blustery, it warmed up enough so that it was downright enjoyable.  The old town of Toledo is exactly as an old European town should be, with the added exoticism of the slightly Arabic stylings of most of the buildings.  The interior of the cathedral was incredible - lavish in ways that I had never seen before.  In one place, a fresco stretched from eye level into a window-carrel fifty feet above our heads and incorporated statues into its stories.  The main altar made me stop and stare, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it was so much more impressive to me than all the other altars in the place.  Then I realized that the bricks that surrounded the altar and its paintings were whiter than the greyish ones that composed the rest of the cathedral, and that the grout in between the bricks had been painted gold!

Toledo also boasts beautiful decorative tiles.  Okay, that’s true of the whole of Spain, but I was particularly taken with the tiles in Toledo and, even though I knew that they were probably tourist rip-offs, I couldn’t help but buy a couple of pieces.

The food in Spain is wonderful (unless you are a vegetarian, in which case Spain and its museo(s) de jamon are hellish) - hearty, extremely flavorful, and fairly inexpensive.  That’s what made the restaurant that Olga and I went to in Toledo doubly disappointing.  We were running out of time before our train, and between our slim purses and dietary restrictions, had to pass up seemingly every restaurant.  We finally found one called “Los Arcos” which met our needs, but it was… underwhelming.  I think the most apt comparison would be to a Denny’s or Jim’s or some other diner like that in the U.S.  The food tasted like it was out of a can, at least in the case of my first course of spaghetti, the bread was basically the equivalent of Saltines - no, of generic salted crackers, I like Saltines - and the choices for dessert were either a slice of melon or an apple (which was mushy).  I had never been to a restaurant in Spain that didn’t at least offer flan or something like that - even the weird vegetarian/vegan restaurant I went to gave me vegan flan for dessert!  Bottom line: if you are ever in Toledo, don’t bother with the restaurant “Los Arcos” - you are much better off going elsewhere.

Miscellanea (is that a word?):
-I love Spanish chocolate caliente (or simply chocolate).  It’s not really meant to be drunk straight - you are supposed to dip churros, a sort of chewy fried dough, into it, since it’s that thick - but since I don’t like churros (and I *did* try them), I just sipped it with a spoon, like soup.  Mmmmm….  ::blissful smile::  Additionally, the pastry called neopolitana crema is amazingly good as well.
-Spanish men are just as forward as they are reputed to be.  I hadn’t been in town but five minutes, while Olga and I were riding the Metro into town, me weighted down with all my stuff, when a fifty-ish-year-old man in the train going the opposite direction (we were at a stop) made a “kissy face” at me.  And the men make the most amazing range of sounds for “approval,” everything from the standard wolf whistle to barking or grunting to assorted words.
-There is a Julia travel company - I saw one of its buses around Madrid. 

My enjoyment of Spain was more tempered than I think it would have been had I traveled straight from America to Spain and were headed straight back.  I’m discovering that I’m something of a homebody.  I like traveling very much, but in small doses - a few weeks at a time.  And Spain also had the misfortune to make me feel like a stranger again.  This is normal for travel, especially in countries where you don’t speak the language, I know.  What I mean is that I was just finally starting to get settled down in France, feel like I might actually be carving a little niche for myself, and then I (voluntarily) disoriented myself again.  On Saturday evening I was really surprised to find out just how happy I was to be back amongst people speaking French again (on the train) - I thought, “ah, *my* language.” 

To sum up, I liked Madrid and Toledo very much - indeed, there isn’t anything I can think of that I *disliked* about Madrid.  I intend to visit them again, and more of Spain - I would like to see Seville, which I have heard much about from Stephanie, who lived there for a while.  I probably won’t get back to Spain during this sojourn in Europe, since there’s a whole lot more out there to see, but sometime in this lifetime…