| A monument at Parque de Retiro where we even saw people diving into the "not so clean" water to stay cool. |
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| Glenn's Madrid Journals 06-16-02 Sunday morning and the plan includes the flea market and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. We also included some basic chores like checking out options for our train trip back to Italy and looking into transferring a smart media card over to a CD. (We are down to our last 10 photos on the 2nd smart media card so we either need to buy another card or transfer data to a CD so we can re-use the cards we have.) We start the day by preparing for the flea market. We had been warned that the flea market was full of pick pockets just waiting to get what they could, and they were good at it!! I made sure that we locked anything of value in the day pack and we made sure that all money (even small change) was put away in our money belts. The only things left in our pockets were used kleenex, which they could have if they so desired. On our way to the Flea Market we stopped for breakfast (ham and cheese croissant, orange juice, and bread) and sat in a nearby park before heading into the crowds. The flea market was not hard to find. All we had to do was follow the crowds. The market was huge and extended over an insurmountable amount of city blocks. (I am not sure that we actually saw it all!!) The market had everything imaginable from leather jackets to just plain junk. We walked the market for well over 2 1/2 hours before we had had enough. We bought a few things while we were there but were careful that we could still carry it home with us. As we were heading out of the market we ran into a stretch that was packed with people and, sure enough, perfect for pickpockets. Erin even saw the lady try to get her hand into my pocket (Erin and I were holding hands) and came up short. This was still enough to make Erin mad that they would even try. The museum was next on our schedule but not until we had some lunch. We fast fooded our way through a McDonalds before getting to the museum. We entered the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza around 2:30 pm. The museum is a private collection that has been collected over generations within the family, a family of German-Hungarian magnates. The works span from the 15th through the 20th century with the main theme being Realism, including Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The museum even had a separate section just on Dali but included Picasso's and many other famous artists (too many to mention). We toured with the assistance of an audioguide which we found to be very informative and interesting. It walked us through the different periods and how the changes took place. Very interesting and well worth the 3 Euros for the guide. It was 6:30 pm when we left the museum and we had not taken care of any of the small chores. We walked to Atocha train station only to find out that we needed to go the Chamartin Train station to get information about international travel. We took the cercania (suburban train) to Chamartin. (This is much quicker as it primarily stops at the 3 main train stations in the city.) Once at Chamartin we gathered more information about our international train trip upcoming but seemed to be stymied behind a lack of interest to help (she looked more interested in leaving than helping) and the fact that they won't walk you through the options (they provide one option until you continue to ask about other options). Frustrating!!! We walked away with what we could get and found an internet place in the train station to check weather reports in some of the cities we wanted to go to next and if we could get anymore train information from the web instead of the information counter. We had no luck on more train information but did have some luck on weather reports, partly cloudy in both places that we had chosen (San Sebastian and Nice). Oh well, we will take our chances on San Sebastian and let you know how we did. After our expedition to Chamartin train station we caught the Cercania back to Atocha train station. It was almost 10:00 pm so we decided dinner was our next agenda item. On the way home we found a Chinese restaurant (we had seen the other day on the way into town) and stopped for the 2 person "menu of the day". It was the same "menu of the day" as we had in Sevilla but it sufficed. After dinner (11:30 pm) we returned to our room and called it a day. One good piece of news, the streets are a lot quieter tonight than Friday or Saturday night. We need a good nights sleep as we have decided to leave tomorrow night for San Sebastian so we will not see a bed until Tuesday morning sometime. |