After two fantastic months in sunny SA, we made our way back to Germany..via Madrid!
(Niel: Madrid is a lovely country, full of nice people)
How exciting! I have been to Barcelona, but it was my and Niel's first time in Madrid. Being architecture students, we couldn't wait to see the Barajas airport - a very famous design by Richard Rogers.
The airport is very cool, but not half as cool as the inventive english signage. It was quite something. At first, both languages look foreign, but after some staring it becomes obvious that reading out loud is an effective way to understand the strange words. Sometimes the rest of the phrase gives it away, for example, one sign above a fridge in one of the shops in the airport read Charcaterie and Cheeses. Hmm. We didn't buy any charcateries, but we did buy a guide to Madrid to avoid two days of learning Spanalsih, I mean Spanish.
The metro runs from the airport and it's really cheap. 2 € each for the trip to the center of town or 8 € each for two days on all the public transport. We took the train to Plaza Mayor in the center of the old city, near to where we were staying. Our first view of the city appeared as we emerged from the underground and we were both surprised at how picturesque our surroundings were.
10:00 am and the cafe's on the square are all still closed and deliveries are being made.
A stroll down town..
Where to go? So we went exploring and found..
.. this interesting building.. what could it be?
That cantilever is from another planet.
Woah! Now that's weird.
The outside is really fantastic. The top part of the building is covered in cor-ten steel lazer cut to look like lace with a hanging garden against the building next door, plus that elephant standing on it's trunk. Turns out Caixa Forum is a Herzog and de Meuron building...very cool!
It's a beautiful city and very easy to explore by foot
There are many museums in Madrid, so we went to visit the museum for contemporary art - the Centro de Art Reino Sofia. It was really huge and the exhibitions were fantastic. We didn't even see half of them because we were too overwhelmed by the immensely impressive work and the excellent exhibition and curation of the work. The solo and group exhibitions alike were outstanding and I would recommend a visit to anyone making a trip to Madrid.
The new wing by Jean Nouvel was..quite something. Obviously expensive, but a bit sci-fi for the average non alien. The art in the courtyard is very charming..and made of the same material as the roof and the entire (red) cafeteria.
Outside the Reino Sofia art museum.
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Inside..Costume design by Oskar Schlemmer from his days at the Bauhaus in the 1920's
And the sci-fi courtyard with a Roy Lichtenstein brush stroke.
The red plastic ceiling with fancy skylights.
At nightfall the tourist-snatchers come out and try to convince people to go to their restaurants, but I managed to convince Niel that we should definitely avoid those obvious hang-outs and instead we went for the small spanish bar a leg and hoof of gammon clamped to the wall above the bar next to the good looking spanish barman. There were already six other people in the bar so we had to sit downstairs..
At first I didn't want to eat the pork on the wall, but it turned out to be really good, so we ate it all, and the breadsticks and cheese, but those gherkins and olives were nnnasty!
On day two of two we did some formal sightseeing. We went to the old palace where we looked at the queue to go inside and then walked over to the old church (below) from where we took a good look at the palace.
From there we took a bus to the newer part of town to see these two extemely leaning towers. Weird!
And from there we went shopping, after which we walked past the touristy spots again and decided to eat there...
The train the next morning illustrated very well why everyone always goes on about German trains being on time. Approximately three minutes before a Spanish train arrives is enough time to walk and fetch whatever it is that you forgot at the backpackers.
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