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| 360 shot off the Roof |
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| Royal Palace, only used for State occasions |
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| Paktrik Metropol's lounge over looking the busy shopping streets of Madrid Very reasonably priced & free access to the coffee machine - hot water for tea bags! |
Felipe II ( King who ordered the development of the Spanish horse in Cordoba) set up his royal court in Madrid on the banks of the river Manzaneres. This is also the King who married Mary and became King of England but stayed in his beloved Spain for the majority of the marriage. On her death he proposed to Elizabeth I to keep the country Catholic even though he thought her illegitimate and spent years attempting to retake the country by setting her cousin Mary Queen of Scots on the throne when he was refused. This came to naught when Wassingham discovered the plot, Mary lost her head. FelipeII built the Armanda to combat the 'English Pirates' who were very successfully sinking or stealing great quantities of gold being shipped back to Spain from the Americas. The courage of the English Navy, her fire boats and a great storm destroyed this enormous fleet and prevented the inquisition from getting to England. The sinking of Felipe's Armada was seen as an intervention from God and Protestants world wide took heart in His protection.This Romantic statue of him is in the Sabatini gardens at the royal palace that we didn't get to.
We sat and watched people for a bit then made a plan of action for our evening and day in this last city of our tour. It was decided that only two of the many worthy cultural sites would be blessed with our presence and the rest of the time would be spent wandering the shops and parks. I was determined to have a genuine paella which Willow informed me I can't because the name infers that it is a shell fish dish - so we were all on the lookout for a corrupted beef or chicken one! A visit to Picasso's Gurnica and Salvador Dali's masterpieces in the Reina Sofia Museum and to the Museum of the America's to see one of only four Mayan Codex in the world were I think democratically decided as the places to visits. M found on google that the art gallery was open until 9pm on Monday nights because it was closed on Tuesdays so we decided to go and leave the Americas for the next morning.
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| Oh Woe - Closed for the Jan 6 holiday. Never fear I have imported some images in place of photos |
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| During the Spanish civil war Franco invited German and Italian planes to wreck havoc on Gurnica, a Basque town fighting against him. The fascists were only too happy to try out their new war toys and obliterated the town. Pablo Picasso, a Spainid living in France at the time painted this canvas over 3x7m in response. I so wanted to see the real thing!!!!!!!!! |
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| Landscape of Cadaqués 1923 Dali was expelled from San Fernando and accused of starting a student rebellion. He was the only artist using cubism in Madrid at the time. Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid |
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| Spain 1938 Dali's response to the Civil War, it is said that Picasso spent hours studying it. A brilliant example of his double imagery, the woman leaning upon the chest of drawers at her ease, her face formed by hand to hand combat. The lion waiting to consume what is left. He drew a sketch of a woman covered in drawers as a response to Freud's new interpretations of hidden memories in the mind. The raw meat hanging out of this draw referring to the bloodshed pulling his country apart, preventing progress or thought of anything else - closed drawers. Museum Boijmaus van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands |
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| Persistance of Memory 1931 First use of the melting clock face and his local Spanish coastline. Dali experimented with 'soft' and 'hard' concepts. Timing coincided with Einsteins theory of relativity. Museum of Modern Art, New York. |
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| Birth of the New Man. Painted in the U.S. of the U.S. 1943 On the cusp of the atomic age. How does mother Europe feel about it? Salvador Dali Museum in Florida. |
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| Okay maybe not quite so interesting. I was pointing out hollows in the trees for the squirrels signs told us not to feed I should have had Chester and Charlie with me! |
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| Even on a dark and dusky winter evening in Madrid you can see where Dali might have been inspired |
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| Memorial in the form of a winding track to the 2004 bombings. One of the trains blew up at the Atocha station we arrived at this afternoon. It's amazing that anyone ever gets home in a world of so much hate and desire for power. |
On 11 March 2004, a series of bombs exploded within minutes of each other on four commuter trains in the Spanish capital Madrid. The blasts killed 191 people and wounded 1,841. It was the worst terror attack in Europe since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Seven of the key suspects - including the alleged mastermind, Tunisian Serhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet - died in an explosion at a Madrid flat in April 2004 as police were closing in on them. A policeman also died. Twenty one people, mostly Moroccans, were convicted of involvement in the attacks. Three of the key defendants received maximum jail sentences.
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| Very healthy feral cats getting their daily meat from a couple of local cat ladies |
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| A fountain with a massive Magnolia bud at the top |
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| So close to a splash. In front of a gigantic monument to Alfonso XII celebrating peace, progress and freedom. He was made King in exile at a young age, was restored to the throne and over his short reign, economic and cultural stability was restored. He died just before his 28th birthday and before the birth of his heir. His second wife, daughter of the Archduke of Austria, set up a competition for the design of this monument. Jose Grases Riera won it. |
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| At this stage of the holiday M would send us to stand somewhere and smile - we don't even know what the subject of this fountain is and didn't have the energy to cross the three lane roundabout to find out. |
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| Pio Baroja, a famous Spanish writer greatly admired by Ernest Hemmingway. |
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| Bear(church) sniffing at the tree(civic possessions) Statue in Madrid's central square La Puerta del Sol |
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| Madrid Post Office with apartments, an art gallery and restaurant renting space. |
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| M spotted a chicken Paella so we came back for tea. |
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| Rd to Indalo so we would remember where to go back for tea! |
For every drink we ordered they gave us a free tapas but these were not little finger food tid-bits - these were whole plates. A giant bagel with cheese, four chicken croquettes, breaded chicken fingers (chooks are more evolved in Spain obviously) mini pizzas. By the time the two paellas came out I was ready to burst, we were thristy again so had to eat more. That night I had horrible cooking dreams about aggressive tapas jumping all over me that Dali himself would have been proud of.
Next morning we knocked at the girl's door at 10am and told them to meet us at the cafe across the street for breakfast. I had been down in the lounge jiggling my Liptons and catching up with my journal since 6 writing down all the tapas I had dreamt to exorcise my mind and saw a whole world of sad and lonely people out on the streets.
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| The yellow awning in the background belongs to our hotel - 'Café & Té' is a franchise eatery throughout Spain. We ordered a traditional Spanish breakfast, hot chocolate and Churros. They were hot, crisp and almost savoury - not like the sugar coated ones at Dream World. Dipped in a gorgeous hot chocolate were yummy - not a slimming breakfast. |
We took the Metro from Callao to Moncloa and walked to the Museo de America past the gigantic Arco de La Victoria that celebrates Franco's victory and destruction of the University city. I don't know much about this era but it made me feel quite nauseous thinking that the bully beat the brains again.
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| This the only Museum in Spain about the Americas and there is very little about the destruction and cruelty bought to the New World by the European super power of those days. A full sized short-haired Foxie with a saddlebag carrying his own poop bags came up for a pat. |
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| The amazing New World |
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| The Mayan Codex. A detail below |
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| Feather ornaments from Peru |
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| Bracelets from the 'natives' |
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| More gold ornaments No wonder el Dorado was envisioned |
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| There were so many cuffs, collars and loin cloths made from teeth. Maybe this is where the tooth fairy got her gold. |
Willow and I headed out again after a restorative back at the hotel lounge. They stayed open until well after 10pm. We gave up around 5 and headed back for showers so we didn't have to get up even earlier the next day. In one shoe shop I found a wallet stuffed into a boot. The store owner said it happened 4-5 times a week. Thieves take the cash and hide the wallets before police can search them for them. All the cards were still inside. We left it with him.
We all agreed a sleep was needed to prepare us for the following day's 4am start. Take away from Macca's and an episode or two of 'Castle' settled us into an early night. Since already showered, I tucked my nighty into my skirt and nipped downstairs - unfortunately the lovely young Maccas girl who assured me she was learning English got the order wrong so I had to dash out again - at least my hair was newly blow dried.
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| Breakfast gangster style at Terminal 1 Madrid 5am. All is very quiet. |
Reading Now: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 2001 Headline Review
A story of finding mother love. The horrors of neglect, the prejudice of Southern U.S. in the 50's an angry father and isolation are slowly dissolved by love and hope amid laughter, romance death, hatred and forgiveness. Honey fixes everything -almost.
"You put his brain in a bird and the bird would fly backward,"p15
"I'll take nine steps and look: Whatever my eyes light on, that's my sign. When I looked up, I saw a crop duster plunging his little plane over a field of growing things, behind him was a cloud of pesticides parachuting out. I couldn't decide what part of this scene I represented: the plants about to be rescued from the bugs or the bugs about to be murdered by the spray. There was an off chance I was really the airplane zipping over the earth creating the rescue and doom everywhere I went." p 75
"The moon was rising, large and ghostly silver.
'Look at her good, Lily,' she said, 'cause you're seeing the end of somethin.'
'I am?'
'Yes you are, because as long as people have been on this Earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans and when she dies away she always comes back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.'
August stared at the sky a long moment and then, turning towards the house, said 'Now it won't ever be the same, not after they've landed up there and walked around on her, She'll just be one more big science project.' p141
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