Thank you for your patience waiting for my Madrid posts! Some things – like wifi – were much more challenging in Madrid. Now that I have more reliable internet, I’ll be sure to catch you all up as quickly as I can!
We arrived in Madrid on Sunday evening, September 30. This particular travel day felt extra long, and by the time we got to Madrid we were all ready to just unpack and head to bed.
As per usual, we began our time in Madrid by taking a walking tour to get to know the city better. We learned about Madrid going back and forth between Muslim and Christian rule and becoming a capital city in 1561. We also learned some about the Monarch line of Spain, the Spanish civil war, and the nationalist rule under Franco. None of us had any idea how recently Spain transitioned over to democracy. After being in Germany and France, where the people are so forward about different terrors from their countries’ pasts, it is very different to be in a country that still feels horrors so fresh and are not yet ready to discuss much about it.
On Tuesday, we went and visited the Prado art museum. We used the kids audio tour as a scavenger hunt to find some of the most important works throughout the museum. It was well set up – kids from the paintings told us information about the art. The paper guide we got told us a room number, but only showed a small fragment of each painting during the tour, leaving it to us to search each painting in the room to find the one painting containing the fragment. Our favorite pieces were Las Meninas by Velázquez, and the Family of Carlos IV by Goya. We liked both of these paintings because the painters added themselves to the background of royal family portraits, which we thought was a very clever way to promote their own status as painters. We also liked the tables that were held up by lion statues, which were made even cooler later in the week when we found out they were originally in the royal palace. The other part of the scavenger hunt that was really enjoyable was the dauphin’s treasure, because there were dolphins hidden throughout the pieces. We were able to find 11 dolphins within the treasure.
Before coming to Madrid, we learned in our research that the first Wednesday of most months there is a solemn changing of the guard at the Royal Palace in Madrid. Since we were going to be in Madrid for the first Wednesday of the month, we decided to go see it. When we got to the palace, there were huge crowds gathered around. Unfortunately, for an unknown reason, the changing of the guards was cancelled. The girls were disappointed, but still really enjoyed touring the palace, especially once they learned that it is still used for royal events. They both were very excited to learn that the next in line for the Spanish crown is a 13 year old princess. In addition to touring the palace, we toured the royal armory. Our favorite part of the armory was looking at the children’s armor.
Our afternoon activity on Thursday was visiting the Reina Sofia art museum. We mostly stayed within the cubism and surrealism sections of the museum. I have never really understood cubism, but Maurene sure gets it. We heard cubism described as “hide and seek between reality and representation.” So naturally, we played I-spy with the paintings. We spent a good amount of time analyzing paintings – finding the shapes within the paintings that make up the subjects. We had the chance to see paintings by many famous artists – including Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. The most impressive painting we saw was Guernica by Pablo Picasso. I expected it to be a similar size to many of the other paintings we had seen, but it turned out to be much bigger. We had the chance to learn some about the history of the painting. Guernica was created to show the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and was exhibited in Paris before going on tour in America. For safekeeping, it was kept in New York’s Museum of Modern Art during WWII. After the war, Picasso lent it to New York’s Museum of Modern Art on extended loan until democracy returned to Spain. In 1981, Guernica finally returned to Spain.
Friday we visited Audrey’s favorite museum of the week – the National Archeological Museum. During our almost three hours at the museum, we only made it through 1.5 floors of the museum because the girls were so interested in the early history of humans. We enjoyed learning about human evolution, including seeing a recreation of Lucy’s skeleton (the skeleton of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis). We also enjoyed learning about how early tools were made, early art, burial processes, money and other aspects of society. One aspect of the museum that was very well done was that they had stations set up throughout the museum with recreations of artifacts that could be touched. Another well set up aspect in the museum were the virtual reality stations. In each era of time, we had the chance to use a VR system to see what a community would have looked like in that time. I was amazed that museum was so large and set up so well with very affordable tickets and yet the museum was practically empty. If you would like to have a quiet afternoon exploring a wide variety of artifacts, I would highly recommend the National Archeological Museum.
I love wines, and usually enjoy Spanish wines. One activity I knew I wanted to do while in Spain was go on a wine tour. On Saturday, I had the chance to tour the Ribera del Duero region north of Spain. I took my tour through the company Winebus, and got an awesome last minute booking deal. Our group met up in Madrid – one tour guide (Ignacio), one older couple from Mexico, and three other people around my age from Canada and New York. We all loaded up in Ignacio’s mini van, which was absolutely hysterical, and he drove us around. Unbeknownst to me when scheduling the tour, I was touring during harvest time! At each winery, I got to see the whole wine making process -workers picking grapes, people and machinery sorting grapes, machinery separating stems from grapes, and grapes going into the different fermentation containers. First we went to a little village with incredible views of the countryside. We had a glass of wine and enjoyed the view for a little while. Then we went to our first winery, Pago de Los Capellanes. We toured the winery, tasted some wines, and had some great conversation. After the wine tasting, we went to have lunch in Roa. We walked up the street to a very unassuming brown door, and stepped in to Restaurant Chuleta to find seating with absolutely breathtaking views. We got the chance to learn how roast lamb is cooked and put our own lamb in the oven. After eating several traditional dishes, we started to head out. On our way out, the older gentleman in our group said something to the restaurant owner in Spanish. I have no idea what he said, but it resulted in the owner getting his guitar and the two of them singing a song. Then the owner grabbed a bottle of sparkling wine, lit a sparkler on top, sang another song and let us go down to the old wine cellar below the restaurant to explore and drink the sparkling wine. After exploring as far as we could without getting caught in cellar mud, we loaded up to go visit a second winery – El Lagar de Isilla. We tasted more wine, snacked on cheese and sausage, and had more wonderful conversation. Overall, getting to see some of the countryside, meet some amazing people and try some really great wines was a fantastic way to spend a Saturday. Next time I come to Madrid, I will definitely be taking one of Ignacio’s other wine tours to a different region of Spain.
Tales of a Traveling Teacher 