South America Part 33 – Madrid Culture and Shopping

After having the free world’s smallest breakfast at the hostel (which consisted of two tiny muffins wrapped up in plastic packaging and a couple of tea bags with a kettle) – we headed to the “Pana” place (from yesterday) for some coffee and croissants supplements.

As we have alread mentioned in the blog – one of the reasons why we went to Madrid was to shop… and one of my reasons to go back to Europe was to go back to H&M – a big clothing chain with cheapo clothes. If I lived in Europe – I’d be a bit hesitant about shopping at H&M because the clothes are mass-produced and wouldn’t be too unique (you can spot people in European crowds wearing H&M)… but because I live in Australia – and last time I checked there weren’t any H&M stores – I don’t mind buying it.

Ant and I went on a bit of a H&M spree after breakfast – we both bought around $100 euros worth of clothes – and for $100 euros you can get quite a bit of clothes (I got 4 tops, 1 sweat shirt, pair of jeans)… and you have to love a shop that puts the women’s clothes in the basement and the men’s on the main floor… After the spree – we went back to the hostel in order to dump the shopping bags. We found the hostel guy in the middle of cleaning our room – he was all apologetic, probably worried if Ant would have another one of his red-hair rage episodes…

We headed down to the Prado Museum (aka pre Contemporary Art Museum) which was a relatively short stroll away from where we are staying. Unfortunately - it was hella busy and we didn't feel like standing in the Lake Burley Griffin in the middle of Winter weather... so we thought maybe we could check out the Arte Reina Sofia Museum (aka Contemporary Art Museum) which was a 10 minute walk away from the Prado. In true latin style - it was shut on Wednesday so we decided to check out the Thyssen-Bornemisza which was strongly recommended by "Julie P" via SMS who said "get the audio as it is the best art lesson ever". We bought the 12 Euro mega pass instead which gave us access to all three museums sin audio.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza is a couple of private collections of eclectic art (eg: from early christian art to impressionists and contemporary) which is open to the public. It is very large and there are works there by big artists but we couldn't help but agree with a guidebook at the hostel which described the collection as "minor works of major artists and major works of minor artists"... Sorry Julie P. :( Maybe next time we will take the audio tour and get an art lesson. Also - we both forked out extra euros to go to a temporary exhibit on Rafael (which was tiny) and a small collection on modern still lifes, portraits and nudies works. To top off our Thyssen-Bornemisza experience - Ant and I had McDonalds for lunch...

We made our way back to the Prado - which had a very much shorter queue than before. The biggest queue was to line up at the security whilst the Spanish guard screams at you for putting your items in the x-ray machine the wrong way. It feels a little funny to have airport-strength security before going to a museum - what are you going to do - hijack the wheelchair mover thingy to Mexico?

The Prado (in true Madrid style) was huge, and again - it was structured in chronological order. I got a lot more out of the Prado than the "T-B" (bad acronym) - with heaps of stuff like Ruben, Titan and some cool Spanish work by Goya who's early pictures are all bright and happy, and his pictures around his time of his death were completely dark and gloomy. Ant had been a bit of a trooper - he gets a bit tired seeing the 1000th depiction of jebus on the cross.

Despite wandering around art museums for about 6 hours - Ant still found the stamina to browse around shops during the evening. Madrid is one of the current "hip cities" of the planet at the moment. It even got a mention on the Qantas Magazine as a "Hip Zone" so it must be kool, right?! There are funky clubs, bars, shops and restaurants everywhere. The district we are staying at is full of it (I mean funky clubs, etc). We had even had coffee in what was the busiest coffee shop in the area (which also happened to be a video rental library as well?!). Who has coffee back in Australia at their local video stores?? (Unless you pop down to Adam and Eve – the local Canberra porn shop for a cappuccino and a skinny macchiato?! No joke).

We had dinner at the Falafel King - he was indeed more superior than the kebab place we had lunch the day before. We need to get our euro kebab fix before we go back to Ali Baba's in Australia (with their scabby kebabs and servings). The atmosphere was a little strange - with "Who wants to be a millionaire" blaring on the television in Spanish. The presenter sounded uncannily like Eddie McGuire, only in spanish.

The next day - we got up all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 9am (well not really - we had a sh@@ night sleep as the place we were staying at has a lot of street noise). Plus Ant knew that we had only a small amount of time left before we needed to go back to the airport (4ish flight to Australia via London and Hong Kong - of course). We went back to yesterday's coffee place for breakfast (after eating our small cupcake of a muffin at the hostel). Ant was wanting to go to Starbucks next door because they had "Hot Chocolate" on their menu but I straight out refused to go (Starbucks coffee tastes like water - sourced from a muddy puddle heated up in an espresso machine). The place we went to had some sort of strange vienna chocolate with caramel concoction - but unfortunately for Ant - he had ordered the coffee version (Ant dislikes coffee). He looked like he was going to be violently sick after taking one sip of the drink. I went and got him some sugar (to try to kill off the coffee taste) - but still - it was too bitter for him.

We took the metro to the Arte Reina Sofia Museum (again - Ant was in a rush and wanted to fit in even more shopping before lunch). The museum is like a more contemporary sequel to the Prado - it covers everything post late 1800s. It houses a really extensive collection of Picasso (Spain's sort-of-favourite son). The museum totally pooped all over the Picasso museum (which is in Barcelona) in terms of its size and collection. The highlight was Picasso’s giant Guernica (which pretty much took up the space of three whole rooms). There was a bit of a "Mona Lisa/Lourve"-sized moshpit going on to see it - but once we pushed the japanese tour group out of the way - we got pole position. There are also a heap of sketches which shows how it was developed and conceived. There was also a room full of photos showing how it was progressed. There was also a kewl Dali collection - it was interesting to see both Dali's and Picasso’s early work - they were both a bit derivative and unoriginal until they developed their own distinctive styles.

After the museum - we did a forced match back into the shopping district of town. Ant got himself a couple of more t-shirts to add to his "really f$$$ing heavy bags". We had a quick kebab to eat at our favourite Falafel King (we should book ourselves into KA - Kebabs Anonymous) before we grabbed our bags - farewelled Hostel Homeless and went to the airport.