Honeymoon- Day 11 (4/30/2011)

It was an up and at 'em kind of morning.  We packed to leave the Palace Hotel and wanted to get in what we had missed at the Prado.  For anyone who doesn't already know this, Saturdays are busy days at museums. And, the rooms with the famous painters were significantly more packed than the other installments.  We sort of kicked ourselves for not going earlier in the week.  We saw more works by Goya, some incredible stuff by Velasquez and El Greco too.  95% of the museum was either portraits of royalty or paintings of a religious theme.  There were a disturbing number of paintings where the Virgin Mary was squeezing her breast milk into a kneeling saint's mouth or creating the milky way using her breast milk.   

Of course, we enjoyed the museum, even if we didn't especially appreciate the breast milk artwork. We were drawn to at least one painting in each room. The famous painters presented there are truly skilled, but we were taken by how many little-known artists (who I am sure are famous in art circles, just not to our unrefined art-appreciating selves) produced some incredible pieces.  We were commenting throughout at the intensity of some of the painters' works.  

The last part of the Prado was admittedly rushed.  We had to run to change hotels.  We took our first taxi drive and were fortunate enough to get a stereotypical (in one sense) European taxi driver.  He maneuvered around cars and roundabouts as if it were the grand prix, all of the time cursing at other drives.  Adding to the scene was the fact that he was listening to religious radio, possibly a priest giving a sermon or meditation.  The contrast definitely made us chuckle.

We were rushing a bit when we checked into our new hotel, Hesperia Madrid, because we needed to change for the soccer game.  One of the few planned events we had in Madrid, this soccer match, between Real Madrid and Real Zaragoza, was originally going to be rather pricey.  (Tony spent a good part of the week arguing with the concierge that the 100 Euro (each) tickets would be fine.)  It was going to be an experience of a lifetime and we would really get to take in the whole culture.  Then, as I mentioned in a prior blog, Barcelona beat Madrid and Madrid was out of contention for the finals.  So, we were quite surprised when the price of the tickets came in more than half of the original expectation.  Ronaldo would be sitting out the last game.

This was en route to the match. Perhaps it means something different here?

I don't know much about soccer, and I expected I would be bored for the whole 90 minutes.  And, for the first 5 minutes or so, my expectation was becoming reality.  Then, the action exploded.  Teams were stealing the ball from other teams in their advance, the goalie for Madrid made an awful error, there were penalty kicks and red cards.  And that was just on the field.  In the stands there was singing and heckling and drum playing.  There seemed to be a song for everything that happened.  It was very exciting and the 90 minutes went by quickly.  Real Madrid lost their last game of the year to the visiting team 3-2.  The loss rests soundly on the shoulders of the goalie who missed when he tried to kick the ball and Zaragoza took advantage of the fact he was out of the goal.

We stopped at, what we later learned was a chain, tapas restaurant on the way home.  This place served small portions at small prices so we were able to enjoy 6 tapas and a salad.  We discovered croquettes filled with Roquefort cheese and pimentos filled with meat.  The latter kind of tasted like deconstructed lasagna.  We also had some of our favorites, including two items that featured ham and cheese.  (We are going to go through sodium withdrawals when we get home.)

When we returned to our hotel, we had plans of opening a bottle of Crianza that we had purchased on our wine tour, but were surprised to find a bottle of Cava (Spanish sparkling wine) and strawberries.  It was a gift from the front desk for our honeymoon.  It was a lovely end to a fun, if full, day.