Madrid ("Standard Europe")



Madrid: 3/23/2017

In the afternoon, I headed to Madrid. The train ride was beautiful, through rolling green hills and cliffs, but  Madrid’s weather was completely different inland – it was cloudy, rainy, and only 40 degrees. I met up with Kristen, who had been in Madrid for a day or so and had already gone on a walking tour.  She and I went to El Retiro, a large park with beautifully manicured landscapes and statues.  We walked past El Prado, but didn’t go in because the line was long and neither of us is really a museum person.




Kristen took me on a mini walking tour to the royal palace (birthplace of Charles II of Spain, my favorite Hapsburg).  If you are not familiar with King Charles, he was the last of the Hapsburg line, and after 8 generations of inbreeding, he was, frankly, SUPER f!cked up.  Here’s all you need to know about him from Wikipedia:

"The physician who performed his autopsy stated that his body 'did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.'

"American historians... described Charles II as 'short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffled Christendom by continuing to live.'"




“Charles II wuz here”

Contuining on our walk, Kristen pointed out a statue of Isabel II (a queen who had a dozen children by a dozen different men after ousting her gay husband, and who apparently did whatever she damn well pleased), and took me to the Moorish quarter, which had a stronger Arabic influence in the building designs.  We walked past the cathedral, affectionately named “almudena,” which means “good looking from the back, ugly from the front,” and apparently is also a phrase applied to people’s appearance. Anyway, this cathedral was very plain on the side facing the castle, because nothing was allowerd to be more ornate or beautiful than the castle. On the other side, though, the façade was very ornate.




We then walked through some cute neighborhoods to the oldest functioning restaurant, which has a wood stove that has burned continuously since the 1700s. Other than that, Madrid is quite modern and is basically just like any other city in Europe.

We had tapas for dinner in a cute neighborhood and walked around a bit more before calling it a night because we’re a couple of old ladies. We decided to take a day trip to Toledo in the morning.




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