Madrid
Today, after taking a 4-hour tour of the city, I visited the Royal Palace. It’s the largest one in Europe by floor area, with approximately 3,400 rooms. However, only a fraction of them are open to the public. This was by far the nicest palace I've seen yet – sorry, Versailles and Fontainebleau! I explored the main staterooms and the gardens and courtyards. Really magnificent!
I attended my first bull fight that evening. The first bull was mighty and threw the picador and his horse down five times, but, of course, in the end, the bull lost. There was a lot of blood, and those poor animals never had a chance, even though they had been explicitly trained to be good fighters. By the last fight, I was bored and decided I would never see a bullfight again.
On my last day in Madrid, I took a four-hour tour of the city and visited This is a massive complex that includes a monastery (the largest in Europe), a royal palace, a library, a school, and the tombs of Spanish kings. It also features the second-largest manuscript library in the world, second only to the Vatican Library in Rome. I found the entire site austere, yet enjoyable. I wondered why a Spanish king (Philip II) had decided to place it here.
In the afternoon, I visited the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen). The cross is 150 metres high, and the arms are 40 metres across. This site was started in 1940 but was not completed until 1960. Franco built it as a memorial to those who fell on both sides of the 1936- 39 Civil War. Incredibly, there are 85,000 graves! War is such a stupid activity by human beings. But such has been the case for centuries and even millennia, in every corner of our planet.
After an all-night train trip from Lisbon to Madrid, I exited the railway station only to find that there were no taxis! After walking three blocks, I finally flagged down a cab. I was driven to the American Express office, which is very small. There was a massive line of people waiting for their mail. Amid the discomfort of being tired, the difficulty finding taxis, and the extreme heat, I could feel my tonsils getting sore. I could only hope it wouldn't get any worse. I eventually made it to the front desk and asked if there was a letter for me. There was! Actually, there were two - from Kathy, as well as one from mom. I next wanted to book a ticket on the Railway Express to Marseille, only to find the office as crowded as American Express's. In other words, I was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Taking the express from Madrid to Marseille meant that I would bypass Barcelona. The train would stop at the Barcelona train station for half an hour, but I would still not see the city itself. In my following letter to mom, where I described my plans to bypass Barcelona, she replied in her following missive, "You are missing the jewel of Iberia! Are you sure you want to do that?" She was, of course, absolutely correct. Throughout the next decade of my travels, I have yet to return to Barcelona. I would like to know whether I will ever have the chance to explore that beautiful city and its recently completed cathedral.
After that unfortunate start to the day, would you believe that when Terry and I arrived at the hotel where I had made a reservation, I was told there was no record of our reservation? In the end, the management found a room on the top floor which we could have. That might seem like a positive development, since the view would be better from that height, but the rooms on that floor were small and not well-appointed. Nevertheless, we entered the room, and I decided to get some sleep.
We had met John & Elena at the American Express office, and together we visited the Prado Museum that evening. Since it was listed as the 16th most-visited museum in the world, I was interested in visiting to see the works of several artists I had heard about over the years. Numerous works by Francisco Goya, the most extensively represented artist, as well as those by Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, and Diego Velázquez were among the highlights of the collection. In my quasi-stupor, I managed to admire what I was seeing and even had a sensible discussion with the others. Nevertheless, I was extremely tired and wished I had been in better physical condition for this viewing.
