Retiro and Sorolla
Our tourist guidebook in Madrid was an excellent Dorling Kindersley, they are beautifully illustrated books that are a pleasure to read. Other guides have lots of information on restaurants and hotels, which is often out of date by the time you visit a city. The guidebook recommended the Madrid Historical Museum, which was on Calle Fuencarrel near the Tribunal Metro stop. Conveniently, the Roccablanca cafe was on the way, so we stopped for breakfast.
The museum is in an old Baroque hospice, and is a real gem. It was almost empty when we arrived and was lovely and spacious and cool. It shows the history through paintings and maps and is the highlight is in the basement where there is a huge model of Madrid as it as in the 19th century. It is a fantastic work of art and a historical record of the old city.
Our next stop was the huge Retiro Park, which is behind the Prado gallery was a former hunting ground of the kings. It is now a great municipal park with strollers, cyclists and people on hired electric scooters. African men sell bags and sunglasses from blankets whilst holding onto ropes tied to each corner. If a police van appears they quickly pull on the ropes to pick up their goods and move to a different spot.
We ate a picnic lunch and watched the world and his wife and children pass by contentedly. The park has its own Crystal Palace, which I guess at one time was a conservatory for plants, but is now empty apart from some glass sculptures which looked like orthopedic splints.
At the far end of the park, we walked to Atocha station, which was the scene of a terrible Islamist bomb campaign in 2004 which killed 197 people and injured around 2,000. We took the Metro from there to Iglesias station and went to the Sorolla Museum.
I had never heard of Joaquin Sorolla, but he is so popular in Spain that they named a railway station in Valencia after him. He painted many portraits of his family, and his love for them pours out of the pictures. The Prado left me unmoved, I couldn’t connect with the religious art. But Sorolla’s paintings of children playing on the beach and his daughters in long white dresses really touched me, I even BOUGHT A PICTURE! I am very careful with my money but wanted a Sorolla so much I paid seven Euros for a print. The frame will cost me another twenty quid, but to hell with the expense.
Our final dinner in Madrid was at Puerta Rico in Chinchilla street, a short walk up the Gran Via It was very busy because it’s good food and “very reasonable”, a winning combination in my books. To be honest, I can’t remember what I had, but it was definitely Spanish and I had some wine with it.
timharnesstravels 
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