{"id":575,"date":"2015-04-08T06:35:11","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T06:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=575"},"modified":"2016-08-21T00:34:04","modified_gmt":"2016-08-21T00:34:04","slug":"madrid-unfiltered-april-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=575","title":{"rendered":"Madrid Unfiltered, April 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, April 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first day in Madrid that isn\u2019t a national holiday. Up at 7am for the first time, and hoping to get back on a schedule that includes sleeping 8 hours a night. Showered and prepped my backpack for the day;\u00a0 a small half bottle of water, a sketch book and old cassette tape box of pencils and erasers, mini IPad, (the Prado<\/strong> has WiFi), postcards to draw on, a much folded and ceased map with routes marked in highlighter, lip balm, and a compact nylon shopping bag. My iPhone slips in my right pocket, tin with cash, ID & credit card in my left pocket, with the keys to the apartment. I’m good to go.<\/p>\n

I ignored my pride and followed my iPhone’s Google maps to the poetry street, Calle de las Huertas . So easy and straightforward. I blush to confess I won\u2019t be leaving the apartment door without running that map app. I have whatever the opposite of a sense of direction is. A sense of dislocation? It\u2019s like the magnet for true north in my head spins randomly. It\u2019s a roulette wheel, not a compass.<\/p>\n

I was at the Prado<\/strong> close to 10:30. Took a stealthy photo of the police. No one misbehaves in these ticket lines.<\/p>\n

\"prado<\/a>Zipped through security with my museum pass and raced up the stairs\u00a0 to start where I left off yesterday. In the grand hallway, my eye was caught by a dog in one of Tintoretto’s grand paintings. A lovingly rendered hound, something like an English setter. I notice that the same dog is in a nearby painting by the same artist\u2013 same markings exactly. I\u2019d bet cash money it\u2019s the painter\u2019s dog. I got out my pencil and a postcard and personal bliss commenced.<\/p>\n

\"1280px-El_Lavatorio_(Tintoretto)<\/a>Also drew a trussed lamb, Agnus Dei<\/i>, by the Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbar\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

\"800px-Francisco_de_Zurbara\u0301n_006\"<\/a>No audio guide today, just my iPod \u2013 Bizet’s Carmen at first, then switched to an audio book while I drew the lamb. And that’s how time flies when I enter a museum.<\/p>\n

Two experiences I didn’t predict. First, the wonderful pleasure of discovering magnificent painters I have never seen or heard\u00a0 of.\u00a0 Second, the twinge of embarrassment when an acknowledged master painter leaves me cold. I\u2019m talking about you, El Greco. I won\u2019t lie. Same goes, Picasso. Though I won\u2019t be admitting it out loud in Spain. It would be like dissing\u00a0 Real Madrid. Probably a deportation offense.<\/p>\n

Left at 1:30 to stroll around the park and visit St. Georges Church<\/strong>. Tried a place friends\u00a0 had recommended for lunch, Fonty<\/strong>\u00a0 http:\/\/fontymadrid.com\/home<\/a>. As a former wordsmith, the name amused me. The asparagus soup was intensely green and asparagussy. It tasted like spring. The steak on a bed of arugula had a decent flavor\u00a0but was too tough and labor-intensive to chew. It was more like gnawing. \"fonty\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Luckily, the over-all experience was redeemed by the desert, a luscious, fresh raspberry pannacotta.<\/p>\n

I’d been unsuccessfully seeking postcard stamps at Tabacs, the only shops permitted to sell them. For a city with smokers on every street corner, tobacconists are few and far between. A nice woman directed me to the Palace Cibeles<\/strong> for stamps. Double score! It was on my list to see, and is a post office. Guards at the first entrance I approached turned me away when I\u00a0 asked in my feeble Spanglish where I could buy stamps. On impulse, I turned back and I showed them the Google translation on my phone\u00a0 \u2018do you know where I can find a post office?<\/em>\u2019 and apparently the penny dropped. Oh, they told me, that\u2019s around the corner and up the stairs. That makes four times so far the Google translate app has changed a no to yes for me. I’m no shill, it’s just the fact.\"CibelesImagG\"<\/a>White marble for miles and beautiful ornate brass mail slots. Went in and was promptly scolded, shooed away from the counter and instructed to take a ticket. I took the ticket, they immediately called my number, and impatiently waved me back over. Ah, the international brotherhood of bureaucracy. I used the Google voice translate feature again, and it worked fine for I would like to buy ten postcard stamps, please.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thought of doing some light shopping, but I was tired and had walked10 miles on concrete and marble, it’s uphill all the way back to the apartment, plus there was a Madrid taxis right outside the PO. I jumped in the\u00a0 cab. and ten minutes and 6 Euros later popped out at my apartment door. Made my standard dinner \u2013 fruit, cheese, ham, and bread.<\/p>\n

Hope I sleep through the night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, April 6 My first day in Madrid that isn\u2019t a national holiday. Up at 7am for the first time, and hoping to get back on a schedule that includes sleeping 8 hours a night. Showered and prepped my backpack for the day;\u00a0 a small half bottle of water, a sketch book and old cassette […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[19],"tags":[152,188,186,207,184,130,194],"class_list":{"0":"post-575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-church","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-museum","11":"tag-palace-cibeles","12":"tag-post-office","13":"tag-prado","14":"tag-restaurant","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/800px-Francisco_de_Zurbara\u0301n_006.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OBxc-9h","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}