MADRID!

Viva Madrid!!

So, about my weekend. Let's begin.

Originally, I was going to go to Malaga with a bunch of my fellow food-abstainers, because there are no synagogues in Granada. Alas, this plan fell through. So with a lack of anything better to do this past weekend, I hit on the idea of going to Madrid with my friend Scott.

Good call.

So we organized our trip in a jiffy, and bright and early on Saturday we trucked off to Madrid via autobus. Now, its a 5 hour ride, but considering that it was Yom Kippur, and I was fasting, I simply took advantage of the opportunity to sleep. Although this meant that I missed seeing most of Castilla de la Mancha (made famous by none other than the most famous of La Mancha's denizens, Don Quixote), I was well rested upon our arrival at precisely 1 o'clock at South Station in Madrid.

First, let me say that Madrid has the 3rd largest subway system in the world, only behind New York's and the Underground. I have never in my entire life come across a system so fantastically complicated as the Madrid Metro. A glance at a system map revealed a network spun not out of reasoned foresight, but out of a maddened desire to cover every inch of the earth with a rail network so no Madrileno would have to suffer the indignity of, God forbid, having to take the bus or *gasp* walk.

It was awesome.

Although everywhere was accessible by subway, it also meant that there were a fair number of redundancies. So, Scott and I each chose our favored path to get to Chamartin station (the location of our hotel, helpfully built into the station itself), and raced. I lost, but only by a few minutes!

We checked in, organized ourselves, and took off. First stop, Plaza de Espana. (At this point, I would like to point your attention to my facebook album of my trip. The whole shebang is narrated more or less chronologically). Madrid is throttled by parks, plazas, trees, and the most stunning 19th century architecture. We wandered our way from the Plaza de Espana, near the overlook of the Temple of Debod, where we could look down on most of the city. We descended, stopping so that Scott could have a quick ice cream break and for me to get some water, because although it was Yom Kippur, I did not want to dehydrate. Sadly, on our way down the hill, we passed by two guys surrounded by garbage taking heroin. Or what I assume to be heroin; generally two dirty people in the middle of a park with syringes sticking out of their arms are not giving each other insulin injections. The addicted seem to be a global underclass, no matter what people may say.

We proceeded over to the Royal Gardens, where I took about an album's worth of pictures. The Gardens are beautiful, but some "right-minded" moron thought it would be a great idea to stuff the most avant garde pieces of statuary he could scour from the post-modern underworld of the city's art galleries. In effect, it was entirely incongrous to see such carefully tended shrubs and classical statues peppered with steel pipes, gigantic red masks, and most hilariously (I have trouble believing this was intentional), a statue of Vladimir Ilich Lenin himself. This was too much for me. I couldn't help but stare at the damn thing. Lenin, the regicide plus ultra, had by either the irreverent joke of some sculptor, or the most blithely unhistorically-minded artista to ever grace our Good Earth found a likeness of himself placed in the garden of a distant relation of the Romanovs. And in case anybody missed the point that this was indeed good ole Vladimir, the bronze casting actually opened to reveal nothing other than a hammer and a sickle. I understand that this is the land of surrealism, but this was a little much. Scott and I then proceeded to go around the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) to the Plaza de Isabel II.

What struck me very quickly was the huge number of monuments dedicated to the various uprisings against authority that had taken place in Madrid, most notably the rising of the 2nd of May, 1808, when the Spanish people rose up spontaneously against the French occupation lead by one of Napoleon's brothers. This was the theme most prevalent throughout the city's many monuments, and I'll need to learn more to fully understand why. I have theories, but they are not within the scope of this post.

Scott and I left the royal environs, and proceeded down the Calle Mayor, which I'll cheerfully translate as Ye Olde Street. Henry, shut up. The Calle Mayor processes along an East-West axis through Madrid, connecting El Paseo del Prado (of the museum's fame) to la Puerta del Sol (Port of the Sun, the city's center), to the Royal Palace and the Royal Theater, among other reliquaries of Imperial Madrid. The Calle Mayor opened upon the Plaza Mayor, which was a really stunning sort of courtyard which was obviously intended to be a central gathering place for people from all over the city. Most fantastically, the facade of the main hall of the Plaza was painted with what I believe to be Renaissance style frescoes, although my brother would know better than I.

Scott and I left the Plaza Mayor, and went across the Puerta del Sol, where we decided to jump on the subway to escape the heat and go to the Parque del Buen Retiro. This is sort of Madrid's central park: it's enormous. It was nice to walk in the shade for a while, but the best part was while we were resting for a few minutes, we saw perhaps one of the coolest sights of the trip: An old man was doing a Snow White impression, birds hovered around him, and would occasionally leap into his hand, peck at the crumbs, and then depart, but always a flock faithfully and patiently followed him. I took some video, but I haven't yet figured out how to put it online.

Scott and I left the park, and wandered through the Salamanca district, which is home to some of the most elegant homes in Madrid. Madrid, in comparison to Granada, is a city home to wide boulevards, and the Salamanca district personified this striving modernity par excellence. This part of the city was founded by the fashionable class at the end of the 19th century, and it retains both a sense of haute bourgeois (of the decidedly Victorian kind; if the Victorians had been diligently Catholic, that is) dignity and at the same time, is definitely reminiscent on a much more subdued scale of the Gold Coast or Fifth Avenue. Alas, the sun was high and we were tired, so we retired to the nearest subway stop, which was fortunately in the center of the district, and took the Metro back to the hotel for a brief half hour siesta.

Alas for our sleep-deprived (and for me, food deprived) selves, our adventure was barely half over. Much more excitement awaited.

Stay tuned, readers, for Madrid Parte Dos a la manana!