The Chairman

Our adventure continues....

Day 3 in Madrid has us hitting more art museums, the Thyssen Museum of Art and the Reina Sophia Art Museum. The Thyssen basically picks up from where the Prado left off, and moves from Renaissance into the 20th century and impressionism (with some more modern thrown in). The Reina Sophia is all modern art, primarily spanish, and features a large collection of Dali, Miro, Juan Gris and Picasso, including his Guernica. While the Thyssen was more Meg's style (the American landscape paintings are atrocious, with only a handful of decent American art; apparently the good stuff is in Bilbao at the Guggenheim which is having an American art exhibit), the Reina Sophia was nearly all modern, which is more along my lines.

Headed back to the hotel to prepare for the tour with the Chairman, but not before hitting a wine store just around the corner from our hotel. We bought a few bottles there, and was surprised to discover that the person running the wine store used to work at Rubicon Restaurant in San Francisco; sometimes it's a very small world.

The Chairman is the head of the Wellington Society in Madrid. The Wellington Society celebrates the military victories of the Duke of Wellington over Napoleon's army in Portugal and Spain (the Peninsular War). Anyway, the Chairman has been based in Madrid since 1975 and now leads walking tours (amongst others) over central Madrid, stopping, quite often, to tell a story about a corner and to have some tapas and wine. The first story he told us was about the building that is now the hotel where we were staying- apparently it used to house the dead bodies from a prison next door (which is now a spanish government bureaucratic building) before they went to the morgue. With that lovely story setting the mood, we proceeded to hit several small bars, eating and drinking our way around Madrid, with the Chairman pointing out various locations, their historical significance and a related story- such as the murder of a prominent Duke who was a well known ladies man (perhaps at the direction of the King of Spain). Anyway, it was an amazingly fun and informative 5 hours, stopping in at various places (all honorary members of the society), learning about Madrid. Also, we were able to share some of our knowledge as he is often travelling to the U.S. for family, and had various discussions about the U.S. Civil War, wine, and the novels of Erik Larson. The food and wine were nearly as good as the stories and narrations- the highlight being the final stop on the tour, where we had several rounds of meat empanadas (much smaller than the versions seen in the U.S. and Mexico), topped with a sweet pepper salsa that was excellent.

Finally, with all the discussion of various wars, and my obvious interest in various battles, the next morning, the Chairman dropped off two bullets that were used in the Battle of Salamanca. If you are ever in Madrid, and looking for a fascinating walking tour of history, food and wine, we highly recommend using the Chairman.

After a long walk and a night of eating and drinking, we made it back to our hotel somewhere after 1 in the morning, exhausted. The next day, however, was the drive to Sevilla, with a stop in Toledo and wineries, provided we could find them, so we could afford a late night, our final night, in Madrid.

One post-script: Apparently, the only soccer teams in Spain are Real Madrid and Barcelona, because those were the only teams we of which we could find souvenirs. Why is this curious, well, I was looking for something from another Spanish team, and every store we went in to only provided those two teams. So, as a result, I was unable to find anything from this team.