On my last day in Madrid, I decided to take a free walking
tour of the city, but before meeting up with the tour in Plaza Mayor, I decided
to go check out the Monumento Alfonso XII in Parque De El Retiro. This monument was built in 1902 because Queen
Mother Maria Christina of Austria wanted to commemorate her son. It has a statue of the king on a horse along
with lots of marble columns and some water.
It’s lovely.
From there, I caught the metro to Plaza Mayor to meet the tour. I really enjoy these tours and have taken
them in several cities. We started out
in the Plaza learning about its history (remember, butcher shops and
inquisition executions) and how the garrote (choking) method of Spanish
execution was invented.
We then passed out of the plaza and to the Luis Candelas
restaurant. Candelas was like the
Spanish Robin Hood. He stole from the
rich and… kept it for himself. However,
poor people, like prostitutes, liked him because he treated them well so they
helped him escape trouble. He supposedly
stored his goods in the building this restaurant now occupies. Eventually, he robbed the wrong noble man and
was executed.
Other highlights included the world’s oldest restaurant (as
determined by the Guinness Book of World Records) and a history lesson on the
kings of the Spanish empire (all of whom married their cousins except for the
guy that married his niece). We also saw
a building with windows at really odd levels that was designed to make it
impossible to determine how many floors the house had. Apparently, after Madrid became the capital
and the Spanish court moved there, there was no place for these noble people to
live. So anyone with a house 3 stories high
or more had to house a noble family or pay more taxes. People obviously weren’t too keen on this
idea, so they tried to make it impossible to determine the true number of
levels in their homes.
We then stopped in Plaza de la Villa to look at the old
Madrid city hall. Our guide also taught
us how to identify Hapsburg buildings by looking for steep roofs designed to
shed snow, which, of course, Madrid doesn’t really get. Finally we took a turn through Elbow Street
and over to Plaza Del Sol before ending our tour at the Royal Palace, where our
guide gave us a little Spanish Civil War history before sending us on our way.
I went back to the hostel to grab my bag and I was off to
the station to catch the train to Cordoba.
I was planning on taking the metro and, after getting to the platform,
ran into two guys that I recognized from my hostel who were also trying to get
to the train station. They were very
nice Brazilian med students traveling around Europe for their summer break
(remember, Brazil, southern hemisphere).
I got this much info from them because it turned out that Madrid’s metro
employees were on strike, so trains came half as often. When a train did come, we didn’t fit inside.
So, we decided to try the other line from that station. On the way up the stairs, my suitcase’s
handle broke. :( At the
other platform, we crammed our way onto the train and got off at Gran Via to
transfer lines. That was not happening. The trains were so full, we decided we had to
walk.
On our walk, we discussed how a marriage proposal made to me
could be quite humorous, (“Mary will you marry me?”), the nursery rhyme
taunting of my childhood, what music we liked, and how long it would take us to
actually make it to the station. We made
it in plenty of time and they were off to Barcelona while headed upstairs to
catch my train to Cordoba. Adios,
Madrid. It was fun.
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