A Day in Madrid

Today was supposed to be a half day of touring with the afternoon off. But due to the difficulties of getting tickets at the Prado Museum, it turned into another full-day tour. 

We left at 9:00 am in the morning, and our local guide gave us a coach tour of the highlights of Madrid. After that, she took us to El Pardo, a hunting-lodge-turned-palace on the outskirts of Madrid. I must say I was glad to be out of the city. After arriving yesterday and seeing the hordes of tourists, I really didn’t feel like doing any shopping, or spending any time in Madrid. So it was wonderful to be outside in the countryside on yet another perfect morning, bright and cool.

I don’t much care for palaces, as I think that those who inhabit them usually exhibit very poor taste. So I was happy to spend some time in the gardens. Except that the gardens, such as they were, were not particularly well-tended having only three blooming trees and no flowers.

After that, we went on a walking tour of Old Town Madrid. Again, I was not very impressed with the place. This was borne out by the tapas lunch we had in a local restaurant near the Plaza Mayor. It just wasn’t very good. I really don’t like croquettes (especially as it is usually hard to tell what is in the middle of the fried outer shell.) And I really didn’t want to eat raw eggs over squid. And so I passed on a couple of the offerings. 

After that, we drove to The Prado Museum. I left my backpack on the bus, and we went in for our timed tickets at 3pm. Our tour guide told us that he was giving those of us who wanted to drive back to the hotel in the bus two hours to enjoy it.

Oh dear, it was so hard to find things. Finally, I realized that the room numbers in most (but not all) the rooms were up high on the wall. Then I had to use the map to puzzle out how to get from Room 9 to Room 51. There seemed to be no logical order to the numbers, and so every time I’d finished with a painting I had to peer at the map to decide where to go next. Needless to say, the 2-hour tour was taking much longer than it should have. It would have been so much better if there had been instructions on how to get from one painting to another. Of course, there wasn’t. I lasted one and a half hours before being completely wiped out. However, I have to say that The Prado has a stunning collections of masterpieces, and I would like to come back to see more. I ended up in the Velasquez room, and got distracted by all the pictures of those women in their farthingales.

By 4:35, I was asking a couple of guards for directions to the way out. I dumped my audiophone in the plastic tray they had, and descended the outside stairs. I was so happy and relieved to see Norberto with the coach, and enjoyed the 5-minute drive back to the hotel before collapsing into my room.

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