The Events of Thursday, April 7, 2011

                El Valladolid Majaderitos Café is a small breakfast café, but the whole place throbs with constant motion and energy, well at least the workers were full of energy. We started out late this morning, since nothing really opens until nine here in Spain. Our attire mostly consisted of T-shirts and shorts, since the forecast was for a toasty 78⁰ and bright sunshine, our backpacks rattled with ice water and a few snacks. Caitlin, who is the tour guide in Spain, led us on a long walk through the spacious streets of Madrid, through empty squares, littered with large umbrellas sheltering empty chairs and tables. We only got lost once, and a helpful local stopped by and helped us find our way. But we eventually reached El Valladolid Majaderitos Café just a little after opening time. The cafe attendants were busy running back and forth, pouring coffee and the famous Spanish hot chocolate. We got a table and Daddy, who speaks fluent Spanish, and Caitlin, who has taken two years of Spanish, headed to the counter to order. The rest of us waited and took pictures. At the far end of the room, the churros-maker was squirting churros batter out of a tube and skillfully throwing the long tubes of batter into a tub of boiling fat. After a little while, he would take the churros out and lay them on a tray to cool. When a customer came up to take their order of churros, he would take some churros and shout the number of churros as he placed them on the plate and then sent the customer on their way. When I came up to take a picture, he stuck a churro up next to his face as if he were going to scold me and grinned. He was great.

                Daddy and Caitlin came back to the table with five cups of steaming, thick, dark, Spanish hot chocolate, four plates of five fatty churros, a grilled cheese and ham sandwich, and a Spanish tortilla which was nothing like what we Americans think of when we say tortilla. The hot chocolate was great, like eating a cupful of hot fudge plain, and for breakfast. The churros were meant for dipping into the hot chocolate and were good that way. The churros did not have any sugar, much less cinnamon sugar; that must be an American thing. The grilled cheese and ham sandwich is a very important ingredient in the Spanish breakfast. It is meant to fill out the breakfast, because they eat their lunches so late in the day. It was really good and definitely filling. Finally, the Spanish tortilla was actually a potato omelet, with eggs, ham, onions and cheese. It is served cold, just a slice of the huge thick omelet, but it was satisfactory. We were all groaning full after this deluxe breakfast and we headed out on a brisk Madrid walk to burn off the calories.

                After twenty minutes of uphill walking, we arrived at Museo Nacional del Prado, dripping with sweat and all of our breakfast burned off. The line was depressingly long, since the Prado had not yet opened. While we were waiting in line, Mom was approached by two Spanish high schoolers. They asked her if she spoke English. She said yes and they said that they were taking English at their high school and asked if they could “answer” her a few questions to practice. Obviously their English needed a little work. She consented and they proceeded to shower her with questions about herself, Madrid, Spain, and the Spanish people. When they were done they said thank you, good-bye, and left. We had unknowingly stepped in a special line that went into a side entrance and therefore suddenly found ourselves at the ticket office. Those under 18 are free, so Daddy only had to purchase 2 adult tickets and we were on our way. After checking our bags in the coat check, we rented audio guides to the massive Prado and began our journey.

                Why a journey? The Prado has 4 floors, 106 rooms, and nine different types of art displayed. The audio guide has uncountable stops and the brochure with maps of the Prado has fifty “must-see” masterpieces. That is why I call it a journey. So, our journey began on the first floor in room number four. This room and surrounding rooms were of Italian and French art, mostly Renaissance and post Renaissance. Then, we stepped into the Spanish art section which occupies the majority of the Prado. This is where it got fun. I love art, but seeing art for five hours straight is not so appealing to me, unless it is Spanish art. There is just a sort of energy, realism, and color in Spanish art that I love. And to make things even better, the Prado’s largest room and the rooms surrounding it housed Spanish art by my favorite Spanish painter, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez. Besides having an awesome name, his art is natural and beautiful, and he has an amazing moustache. Last year I did a History Day project on him and so seeing his original masterpieces face to face was sort of a pilgrimage for me.

                The first works by Velazquez were a couple of his portraits of famous Spanish people with funny looking leotards and his painting, The Drinkers. This masterpiece is a mythological scene. The Greek god of wine, Bacchus, is bringing the refreshment of his wine to the common people of the world. Instead of having beautiful models pose for him as the poor of the world, Velazquez went out and grabbed a few beggars off the street to give it a more realistic effect. And it worked. You could practically smell the wine trickling from their drunken lips. Next, was the huge room of his royal portraits. Velazquez was the royal portraiture for King Phillip IV of Spain, because of his amazing talent, until his death in 1660. So, Phillip was painted in his court clothes, on a horse, and in hunting gear. All are entirely realistic. Before Velazquez, the painters were supposed to make the royalties look as beautiful as possible to respect their position, but Velazquez painted their mirror image, exactly the way that God made them. The line of Spanish royalty in the time of Velazquez had a distinctive under bite, giving the kings a bulldog look. And even though it may be ugly, that was the way that they looked, so it was exactly the way that Velazquez painted them. At the east end of the long room was Velazquez’s most famous piece of art, Las Meninas. It was amazing to see up close. The detail, perspective, color, and light were so perfectly done, that it looked like a giant photograph. The goal of my art pilgrimage complete, we moved on to some of his lesser works. Mom’s favorite was The Crucifixion. In my research of Velazquez, I learned that some of the artists of the time would take prisoners or slaves as models and crucify them to show the true anguish and pain that Jesus took upon Himself, when he sacrificed himself as the Passover lamb for all. However, as realistic as the painting is, Velazquez did not believe that art should take the life of another man and simply used a live model with his head hung low. The painting is breathtaking and Mom went on and on about how the body came out of the canvas. The Spinners depicts a mythological story of a common weaver girl who challenges the Greek goddess of the arts, to a spinning contest. The common girl wins and in anger, the goddess turns her into a spider, doomed to weave for the rest of her life. The painting has fabulous perspective with another of Velazquez’s paintings depicted in one of the two rooms of the paintings. The spinners’ heads are bent over their wheels, deep in concentration, cheeks pink with the hard work; the color and light falling so perfectly across the painting. The next room was filled with paintings by Velazquez of the court entertainers, including dwarves, buffoons, madmen, and even some mentally disabled. Again, Velazquez depicts them exactly the way they are. One of my favorites of these is of a dwarf, sitting on the ground, looking at you directly in the eyes, challenging you. It is so realistic that it makes you blush if you look too long. After that we were done with Velazquez for the time being and moved onto Flemish art.

                I really liked the way that the Flemish artists paint. Mostly all of them are of family picnics, with children laughing and playing, ladies dancing and men playing different instruments. They look so fun that I just wanted to jump in and join them. In one of the galleries there was an artist set up painting a copy of a portrait by the Flemish artist, Anton Van Dyke. It was fun to watch him paint. We whisked through the rest of the Italian, French, German, and British art sections, where the ladies’ jewelry looked so three dimensional, I wondered if they just glued some jewels on, but no, they are painted. By now it was almost three in the afternoon, and we hadn’t had a bite to eat since our lavish breakfast. So, we decided to whisk our way through the rest of the floor, visiting only the masterpieces, and then have lunch.

                On the way out, we stopped by several Spanish masterpieces including Velazquez’s Surrender of Breda, another of my favorites. I would of course like it better if it were dancing dryads in a flowery meadow instead of a boring, cruel, and dark war scene, but his attention to detail and perfect sense of perspective makes me like it even so. An artist had been copying it, but was obviously on lunch break, so we hurried onward. Once we had finally reached the end of the floor, we had to get our bags, check in our audio guides, get our tickets stamped for reentry into the museum, find an exit that would let us go out, and then find a satisfactory spot for lunch. We had planned on buying more lunch supplies, but ran out of time, so we split two thin loaves of bread, two apples, and one long carrot among the six of us, while listening to a Spanish guitarist. Fed and somewhat rested, we headed back in for a second dose of art.

                We started our tour of the ground floor with works by the German artist, Dürer. His self portrait and Adam and Eve were the most beautiful, but I still like Spanish art better. The Flemish art that we saw afterwards was just plain strange, so strange that I’m not even sure how to describe it, but if you’re interested, just look up Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and you should get a pretty good idea. After this, it was all Spanish art. Many of the paintings were cartoons by Goya that were “rough drafts” for tapestries. Some of them I just couldn’t believe could be made into tapestries, they were so complex. The rest of our tour was pretty boring, most of us just wanted to book out of there and get going on our exciting evening. So, eventually we waltzed out, well I did, turned in our audio guides again, used the facilities, and headed on our way. By now it was 6:30, so we walked a short distance to start our Spanish “tapas tango”.

                La Taurina Cervecería has a fun atmosphere with stuffed bull heads hanging from the walls, tiled mosaics depicting bull fights and cattle ranching and pictures of prime moments during bull fights plastered the walls. Reruns of the previous season’s bullfights were playing on the television and lovely aromas of Spanish cooking filled the entire restaurant. We ordered a very expensive, but delicious dish of heavily spiced rice with whole crawfish (eyes still intact), and shellfish. It was very good, but as I mentioned before, very expensive. While we ate we watched two bull fights from start to finish. That was enough for us, we don’t need to see it in person, which is a good because it is not bull fighting season in Spain right now.

                When we finished, we walked across the street to Museo del Jamón, The Museum of Ham. The décor is tastefully done, unless you are a pig or a vegetarian. In this “restaurant you eat standing at the bar. It was very crowded, so we had to fight for a spot. (This wasn’t a real bar or else we kids would not have been allowed). They served us soda in wine glasses while we waited for our sandwiches. When Daddy ordered, the clerk repeated his order to the entire world in a loud, bellowing voice. The sandwiches were all different forms of ham sandwiches. Mom’s was ‘croissant mixto’, a croissant with cheese and ham, Daddy had ‘bocadillo de chorizo,’ bread and a spicy sausage. Abby ordered ‘bocadillo de lacòn’ which is boiled ham on bread. Caitlin, ‘bocadillo de queso,’ bread with cheese, and Ben had ‘pan tomaca museo’, a more expensive ham with a delicious tomato paste. And finally I ordered the ‘bocadillo de jamon,’ the most expensive of the hams (meaning that the pig led a happy life eating a diet of strictly acorns). These sandwiches were only 1€ and the sodas were 1€ each too so it was a very inexpensive dinner. After we finished our outstanding meal, we walked over to the counter where hams and cheeses were being sold. Daddy bought some sliced ham and a chunk of cheese from the counter and we got to watch the process. The cheese was just packaged up, but the ham … the clerk pulled down a pig’s leg, from where it was hanging with hooves still intact, put it on a cutting board and started slicing pieces off of the leg. We could see the inside of the leg, somewhat gory, with the bone in the center surrounded by swirling white and red, muscle and fat.

                Our next stop was La Casa del Abuelo. There were two restaurants that boasted that name, so we chose the one that was smaller and empty. The man who greeted us when we walked in was carefully carving a pig’s leg. He motioned to the empty room with standing bar stands and said, “Your choice,” (in Spanish of course). We chose two stands near a fish tank swimming with bright colorful fish, perfect for a seafood restaurant. He asked what we would like and Caitlin pulled out her Spain and Portugal book by Rick Steves and asked for gasmbas al ajillo, or the shrimp version of escargot, cooked in oil and garlic and ideal for bread dipping and langostinos a la plancha, or grilled prawns. The gasmbas al ajillo was somewhat spicy, but delicious for those of us who don’t mind the spice. The grilled prawns were dripping with oily juice and though messy to eat, were stupendous. We said “adios” to our waiter and headed home.

                Even though it was already nine o’clock at night, the sun was just starting to set. Walking on the streets of Madrid, I can honestly say that I felt perfectly safe. We passed a wide street that was jammed with police cars with their lights flashing, helicopters zooming overhead, and there was lots of shouting. We found out later that there was a student demonstration going on. They were protesting the 40% unemployment rate and how difficult it was for newly graduated students to find jobs. But, we walked a few blocks away and even though we could still hear the shouting, I felt safe. Kids were buzzing around us, playing tag, passing soccer balls back and forth, and blowing bubbles. After stopping at a grocery store for some fruits and vegetables, we walked under an arch leading to a pedestrian walk that ended literally at the door of our apartment building. We climbed the two floors to our apartment and collapsed, hot, sweaty, tired, and full on our beds after a 12 hour, but enjoyable day in Madrid.