Konnie and I have become accustomed to the longer trips that we have been taking the past few years so one that lasts a week is merely a blink.  Our last day which had our best weather dictated a trip to the Real Jardin Botanico.  Unfortunately, almost nothing was in bloom.  So after a brief visit there we did some shopping with Isabelle and prepared for our long journey home.

Thanks for following us on our travels yet again.  Next up, to New York with my son Benjamin in May and then tentatively back to Europe with Konnie later that month for her birthday if we can pull the arrangements together.

Wednesday was cold, yes cold, and wet so we opted to visit Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.  This magnificent museum is built around the collection assembled by Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his son.  It, as well as the Prado that we visited earlier, contain outstanding collections that are easily enjoyed by the casual art viewer.

On a much improved weather Thursday, we decided to continue to see sights in the Old Madrid area of the city.  Our visits included the Basilica Pontificia de San Miguel which stands on the site of an old Romanesque church a block from our apartment that was constructed between 1739 and 1746.  From there we hit the Plaza de Oriente in an effort to see the Opera House (Teatro Real) but there were no tours today.  So on to Museo Cerralbo.

As we have learned elsewhere (such as the Soane Museum in London that we only found because of or friend Jacquie Martinez), it is not always the big name places that are the most interesting and Museo Cerralbo is in that category.  This 19th century mansion is a monument to Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa.  The house is huge and gorgeous and the collection of "stuff" intense and endless.  Well worth a visit when you are here.  Lunch at Cascaras.

From there we headed to San Francisco el Grande, another unheard of jewel.  On the way there we hit the Muralla Arabe, a small stretch of outer defense wall that is all that is left of Madrid's Moorish heritage.  Anyway, unfortunately no pictures are allowed at San Francisco, but the interior is a remarkable building.  The artwork contained therein is spectacular including the magnificent frescoes on the dome and the dome is one of the largest in the world.  Larger than St. Paul's Cathedral and only outsized by St. Peter's at the Vatican and the Pantheon according to their literature.  A must see if you are in Madrid.  The tour is in Spanish and Isabelle did a terrific job of translating the highlights for Konnie and me and she again handled our communications with various vendors during the day.

This city has more restaurants than we have ever seen in a concentrated area.  We are a couple of blocks from a street named Calle Cava Baja and we counted 40 restaurants on that short stretch.  An excellent dinner at Emma & Julia's on Calle Cava Baja with generous treatment of us as their guests.  There you go.  We have killed Old Madrid this week hitting every highlight in the book.  Only one more day before the long trek home.

The construction of Catedral de la Almudena was begun in 1879 but was not completed until 1993 making it an extremely modern cathedral by European standards.  Its construction was slowed by the Spanish Civil War, involved multiple architects and I’ll bet the contractor was changed along the way also.  It must be interesting to span the evolving building technologies over a century plus.  In any case, in the Catholic cathedral tradition it turned out to be quite beautiful.

After a few stops at closed sites where the actual hours did not match those in the guide book, out Madrid exploration for the day included walking the Calle Mayor, Calle de Alcala and the Gran Via and then a walk through the La Latina area.  The architecture in Madrid is quite grand.

Lunch at the pricey Restaurante El Schotis on Cava Baja and dinner at La Camarilla, also on Cava Baja, where both staffs were helpful in guiding us through these crazy tapas.

So we started Monday later than we wanted but hopefully we are completely adjusted now.  We started the day at Arcade, the restaurant where we killed two hours on Saturday while we waited for our apartment to be ready.  As is often the case abroad, they treat us better on subsequent visits than we get treated when we frequent restaurants in our own backyard.

Then off to the Catedral Nuestra Senora de la Almudena (closed, we’ll try again tomorrow) and the Palacio Real.  The Palace is spectacular (no pictures allowed inside so few pictures today) with most of the decorative highlights being imported from Italy.  Then it was one of our walking tours hitting Plaza de Oriente, Jardines de Lepanto, Jardines de Sabatini, La Rosaleda Parque with its Templo de Debod, then past the Monumento a Cervantes (Don Quixote), past Plaza de Espana, down the Gran Via and back to our neighborhood near Plaza Mayor.  So far there is no comparison between the gardens here and those in London.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called La Mordida de Fuentes (but they spoke Spanish so it counts!).  It did have many dishes that we do not see in the states.

Tuesday we will try to focus on the cathedral and other churches.  We’ll see how many we can catch open.

Konnie and I left Denver on March 16th with my granddaughter Isabelle for this year’s spring break trip with her.  This time we headed for Madrid.  Isabelle, now 14 and in the eighth grade, has been in a Spanish immersion program in school so we thought this would be a good place for her to test the progress from her immersion.

And given that that there is far less English spoken her than I expected, so far her Spanish has worked well and been a big asset to us.  We spent Saturday waiting for our apartment to be ready and getting familiar with the area around our apartment in Central Madrid including two hours in a coffee shop where the proprietors did not speak English but somehow delivered to us everything we mentioned to each other that we MIGHT be interested in consuming.

After visiting Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol, Mercado de San Miguel and a “late” lunch at a lovely Tapas restaurant, we called it a day to make the time zone adjustment.

On Sunday we had a late start with lunch near Plaza Mayor eating outside at Kitchen Stories where we fought off a team of gypsies who were aggressively pursuing some of our food.  From there we spent the rest of the day at Museo del Prado before having dinner at Miau where Isabelle handled all of the communication with the staff.