Adios, Madrid! Salaam Alykum, Tangiers!

 Today we flew to Tangiers, Morocco as a side trip to our time in Spain. We'll continue to Barcelona after a few days here.

But this is about our time in Madrid! Honestly, the best thing about Madrid was our awesome apartment. It was sunny, spacious, clean, comfortable - and best of all - odor-free. I live in dread of the musty AirBnb. My nose seems to detect mustiness far more acutely than the average human being. 

Chris and I both have involved morning routines, so we didn't stir from the apartment until around noon - just after breakfast! We seem to do this when we travel: we end up having late meals and late nights. We followed our pattern in Madrid, but I'm 20 years older than when we did this in Paris in 2000. I'm not sure I can keep up with this schedule! 

Wednesday we set off for the renowned Prado Museum of 17th century Spanish art: Goya looms large, but also Velasquez, El Greco. We spent a couple of hours there. Imagine lots of Renaissance religious art and portraits of royalty. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures, so no photos to include here (I know you're disappointed 😉). I soon realized that this kind of art was not my cup of tea and decided that I didn't want to spend the rest of our time in Madrid in art museums.

And yet - I wanted to see Picasso's Guernica. So Thursday we went to the Museo Nationale Centro de Arte Reina Sofia to view Guernica. 

I had seen lots of pictures of Guernica, but I don't think I'd every seen it in person. I found myself studying it for several minutes, just to take in everything going on in the painting. Chris was overwhelmed by the pain in the picture. He had to turn away. We then spent some time in the rest of the collection, viewing other modern and surrealist artists' works. These were often quite dark and pain-ridden, but this was only to be expected given the time of Fascism, world war, civil war, and revolution. For me it mirrored the advent of existentialist philosophy around that time, reflecting the feeling of the world no longer being held by a benevolent God, but rather humankind being left on its own.

For lunch we dropped by (after a long hilly walk) the Mercado de San Miguel, a well-known marketplace. It was crowded, even at about 3:00 p.m. I was a bit disappointed, because I was hoping it might be more like a French market that pops up in the medians of the streets of Paris, but it was pretty yuppy and touristy. The food was good, though.

Once home, we kept it simple and ate Indian food across the street from our building, Came home; did laundry; and packed to leave for Morocco the next day.

Next time: Tangiers!