Madrid, the museum city

First stop on the Madrid museum trail was Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. This museum houses the art collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, an avid art collector, who married a former Miss Spain and moved to Spain. The government renovated an old palace to house the collection. After he died in 2002, his widow continued collecting more art. There is virtually one piece of art from every major artist from the 1400s onwards. There are Renaissance paintings, a Titian, a Caravaggio, a Rubens, a Rembrandt, a couple of Monets, a couple of Sisselys, Pissaros, Rodin sculptures, several Picassos, a Dali...It's fascinating that a modern day rich guy can have acquired so many pieces.

Museo del Prado was my favourite museum in Madrid. Taffy already predicted it would be before I went as it concentrates on my favourite periods in art. It is also set up very well, with a Masterpieces list in the floor plan and where each of these paintings is housed. Some of the highlights were Raphael's The Cardinal, Caravaggio's David Victorius over Goliath, Velazquez's Las Meninas and the Titians. There was also a room full of Goya's Black Paintings, which are extremely disturbing.

The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia is almost entirely made up of paintings from the Realism, Cubism and Surrealism movements. Its most famous painting is Guernica by Picasso, which takes up an entire wall. The preparation paintings take up another room. My favourite paintings were Dali's Surrealist paintings, though there were also some of his Realist and Cubist paintings, which I didn't realise he had gone through before settling on Surrealism.

The Spanish Royal Family do not live in the rather grand Royal Palace. They live in a mansion in the country and come into the palace for official duties. The tour includes the Royal Pharmacy, with large porcelain and glass jars that used to be filled with medicines and herbs. There are also scales, mortars & pestles and trunks for when the royal family travelled and needed portable medicine cabinets. The Royal Arsenal contains armour worn by various kings and princes of Spain and their armies as well as gifts from other countries, including a samurai helmet and armour from the Japanese Emperor.

On the food side, we went to Botin on Friday night (the suckling pig and roast lamb place I ate at last time I was in Madrid). On Saturday night, we had paella. While we were waiting for the paella to arrive, a carnival procession came down the street. There were brass bands, people with enormous paper mache heads and people with costumes twice their height that were balanced on rings around their heads. On Sunday night, we had tapas. Each morning, Jenny and I went for breakfast in nearby cafes, having cafe con leche (milk coffee) with churros (Spanish donuts, parros (like yao jar guai) & churro relleno with chocolate cream (almost induced immediate heart attacks in us).

We also visited Parque Del Buen Retiro (the big park next to the Prado), Plaza Mayor (Madrid's most famous square), Plaza de la Puerta del Sol (with the statue of Madrid's strange emblem, a bear on his hind legs reaching up to the strawberry tree [which is not strawberry, it is a Madroño tree]) and the Cathedral.

This weekend, Taffy and I visited Buckingham Palace. It is open for a couple of months each year when the Queen goes to Balmoral for the summer. Buckingham Palace is THE most beautiful palace in all of Europe. It toes the fine line between being too ornate and elegant class. There is an exhibition on the Queen's visits to the Commonwealth with gifts from the countries and dresses she wore. The Australian gifts and dresses leave quite a lot to be desired. The wattle dress was almost fluorescent yellow, the opal necklace disgustingly large and the wattle brooch just a mess of yellow stones. The Canadian gifts, on the other hand, were totem poles in dark wood, a lovely Inuit jade statue of a polar bear, a maple leaf brooch and an evening gown of white and blue with beading stitched in the shape of maple leaves. Why can't we be classy like that?