July 2023

Three Months in Madrid

Every time I arrive in Madrid I have the same feeling: "I'm home." It's not a perfect city (I don't think such a thing exists) but I feel very connected to the culture, the architecture, the language, the food and the wine, the vibe.

This time I rented a very comfortable apartment in the Barrio de las Letras (The Letters Neighborhood), which was once home to Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Tirso de Molina, and Góngora. Rich in history, full of bars and restaurants, a few steps from fantastic museums, and close to the Parque del Buen Retiro, a large and beautiful park. A great place to live.

I managed to visit quite a few museums during my stay in Madrid. My peregrinations took me to the Museo Nacional del Prado (one of the best art museums in the world), Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (contemporary art), Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (an impressive collection, plus a large Lucian Freud retrospective), Fundación MAPFRE (they had a large Leonora Carrington retrospective, plus several photo exhibitions), Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (a big collection of Goyas, among other artists), Museo Palacio de Liria (which used to be the residence of the Duchess of Alba and still displays Goya's paintings of her), Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida (a church with ceiling frescoes by Goya, and it's also where he is buried), Museo Lázaro Galdiano (yes, more Goya, including one of my favorites, El Aquelarre, known in English as Witches' Sabbath), Casa Museo Lope de Vega (where Lope lived his last decades), Museo Arqueológico Nacional (the best archeology museum I've ever seen), Museo Cerralbo, Museo del Romanticismo, Museo de Historia de Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Museo Sorolla, and many others. Even when not going to a museum you end up in a place that could be a museum. For example, I used to eat at Casa Alberto, a tapas restaurant just a few steps from my apartment. Not only it has been in business since 1827, but before that the building used to be residential, and Cervantes lived there while he wrote the second part of Don Quixote.

I only went to the theatre once, but it was an extraordinary experience: at the beautiful Teatro Calderón, La Fura dels Baus presented a creative and entertaining performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Unforgettable.

Parque del Buen Retiro

Museo Cerralbo

OK, enough with the artsy stuff, what about the food?

Ah, to live in a place where you can eat good paella every day of the week. I almost did that, but there were also other delicacies calling my name: gazpacho (tomato and cucumber soup, served cold), tortilla española (potato omelet), escalopes de ternera (veal escalopes), cochinillo asado (roasted piglet), solomillitos de jabalí (wild boar tenderloins), chuletas de cordero (lamb chops), bocadillos de jamón serrano y queso manchego (serrano ham and manchego cheese sandwich), the list doesn't end. All accompanied by a glass of Rioja or Ribera del Duero.

And what about side trips?

There was so much to see and do in Madrid that I almost never found the time to go elsewhere. The exception was Toledo, because you always have to go to Toledo. I visited the Iglesia de Santo Tomé (to see El Greco's El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz again), climbed the 130 steps of the Iglesia de San Ildefonso tower (to see a panoramic view of the city), had carcamusas a la toledana for lunch (pork and seasonal vegetables stewed with tomatoes and bay leaves), bought mazapanes (a confection made of almonds and sugar), and returned home a happy man.

Toledo

And after Spain?

I'm already in Skopje, the capital and largest city of North Macedonia, where I'll stay for a few weeks. But that's a story for another time.

Priyaten den! (That's "have a nice day" in Macedonian.)