Madrid Day 3 | One Day at a Time

Continued from Madrid Day 2 Part 2.

Slept terribly last night. Between alcohol, jet lag, and coming down with an illness it was a night of sporadic sleep. Terrible. Set our alarm at 10am, so that’s when we woke up. I am awake, but my body does not feel 100%. My tummy hurts, but that’s typical from all the random food and drinking, so I attributed it to that. As the day goes on, it starts to occur to me more and more that I’m actually ill. Blah. Oh and on top of all this, the AC goes out in our room, and it turns out many rooms of the hotel are affected. Fortunately our windows open and it was cool enough outside to keep the room relatively comfortable overnight.

Since I woke up feeling under the weather, it wasn’t until 12:30pm when we made it out of our hotel. Oh look, tiny Madrid trash truck.

Grumpy KL is grumpy because he’s not feeling well.

Look at these cute tiny buses here.

We called an Uber to take us to a museum, but the Uber took forever to show up. It got stuck a couple blocks away and just stopped moving. Then we looked down the road and saw police motorcycle blocking the road where we need to be headed. I guess we’ll just cancel the Uber and walk.

Saturday, a lot more people out and about today.

We never did figure out what event they were holding that they had all these roads blocked off and all these porta potties installed overnight in this area.

Walked by the Prado.

Atocha train station, we’ll come here tomorrow on our way to Barcelona.

On top of the closed road, protests. I think this one is for pension?

Reina Sofia museum, where we are headed, and where the protesters are headed too. Better make it up into the entrance just in case they somehow block our entry.

Made it in quickly without drama. Got online tickets this time so easy peasy.

Yes, it’s literally just a video loop of people drilling for oil…how is this art?

At one point RL sat down on this bench so we could figure out where we were in the museum. Then a museum attendant came over and asked her nicely to not sit on the art work. We had quite a laugh about it because we had no idea it was a piece of art, we all thought it was a museum bench.

Literally 5 seconds after RL got off the bench, a kid sits down on it thinking it’s a bench too. I’m sure everyday hundreds of people are asked to get up as it’s a piece of art. Or maybe that’s the art installation, just getting people to get off of it.

They handed out no paper maps, and we couldn’t find the correct link to the map on our phone, so we could only rely on these sporadic signs at staircases.

RL liked this one.

We both liked this one.

I love crude art.

And apparently George does as well.

Painting on the left is probably my favorite in this whole museum. It’s about an anarchist getting taken away by the judge. Julio Romero de Torres painted this one.

Quite phallic somehow.

Then somewhere around this point, some other person got a talking to from a museum employee saying that no photos are allowed? Eh, what? I didn’t see no photo restrictions at this museum listed anywhere and I’ve been taking photos this whole time and I’ve been seeing others take photos this whole time. It turns out there are a few special room with the most famous works where no photos are allowed. The “no photos” signs are very small and displayed at the edge of the door as you walk into this area. Super easy to miss. OK, fine, I won’t take photos in this room.

So, I walked to the next room, and looked carefully at all the walls to make sure this isn’t a gallery where photos are not allowed. No where did it have a no photos allowed sign, so I took up my camera and aimed it at the “restricted” room, but instead accidentally started a video. Well, I took a screen shot of this video and you can see this really angry museum employee storming over in my direction to yell at me in Spanish with Picasso’s Guernica behind her.

I didn’t understand what she said other than that it was a 200 Euro fine blah blah blah. I then pointed at the door where the no photo allowed sign would be located, and showed that there was not one in this room. She then said something else to me angrily and then we left it at that. WTF lady, you can’t just yell at people like this. I was pretty angry about this and the inconsistencies in this part of the museum. Ironic that this lady went to war on me as I took a photo of an antiwar work of art. Oddly, this spurt of adrenaline actually made my illness feel slightly less bothersome….at least for the next 15min or so.

And I know for a fact that photos are allowed at other parts of the museum because other museum employees had told us that we can take photos. I asked them why it wasn’t allowed in that particular room, and they were equally as disagreeable to that rule. I am guessing it’s just so the gift shop can sell more prints of the famous Picasso work.

I angy.

Quite liked this one. Too bad I didn’t get more of the room that it was in, it complemented the room well.

And that’s that for the Reina Sophia.

Atocha station.

Despite my smile, I wasn’t feeling too hot. Or maybe I’m still riding my fight or flight response high from the earlier photo incident.

I believe this was another painting that no photos were allowed, Dali’s The Great Masturbator.

We originally had plans to visit another garden after the museum, but since I’m under the weather, we are switching gears and getting lunch instead.

This is the spot.

Yes.

Yes again. Love the thicker cut chips.

Parting shot on the house, some sort of irish cream.

After lunch, onto next destination by Uber.

Old next to the new.

Catedral de la Almudena, it’s right across from the royal palace.

Woah, there’s a really modern area in this cathedral that I’ve never seen in other cathedrals. I think it’s a chapel of John Paul II. Apparently this church wasn’t finished until 1993 and this chapel a much more recent addition.

Odd to see such modernism here. I wonder now many people decried it for being modern.

Honestly, the ceilings are kinda cool…but it just doesn’t feel quite as special as some really really really old cathedrals. RL disagreed with me and really liked it.

Right across from the cathedral is the royal palace. We elected not to visit it, the interest to visit room after room after room of a royal palace just wasn’t high on our list.

Newer churches just ain’t built as well and with much painstaking work as older ones.

There’s an area to enjoy the view here by the church.

Accordion!

Alright, time to get an Uber and get back to hotel so I can rest my sick body. RL hiding in the shade provided by the lamp post.

I could go for some fried chicken.

You can have your full US fast food experience here in Madrid.

Now, time to nap after a long first half of day.

Last night out in Madrid, looking for food.

This was the first tapas place we ate at, quite the crowd out here tonight.

We settled on a different spot, Casa Toni. Anthony Bourdain visited here when he was in Madrid. They were full downstairs, but they had an upstairs section for us.