Yvon and I took a trip to New York, Madrid and Seville in 2012. Here in Madrid we did the normal things: galleries, restaurants, and chased after modern architecture. Madrid is a funny city, lacking in geographical boundaries that help to divide up most other cities. The easiest way I found to think about the central city was that it was bookended on the west by the enormous Casa de Campo park, and on the east by the manicured Buen Retiro Park. The west had the Palace, the east had the museums, and the near north the Gran Via. It was hard, always, to make sense of the city geographically, however, and in organizing the photos I found we seemed to stumble over the same areas repeatedly, perhaps inadvertantly.
Photo List (Total 458 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Central Madrid (67 photos) - Our loathesome hotel overlooked the Plaza Puerta del Sol, which couldn't possibly be any more central in the city, and these photos include the very first photos of the city, taken from our balcony, and then spread out from there. You will see photos of the very famous Plaza Mayor (Spanish for "Large Plaza with Many Overpriced Sandwiches") and the lovely Mercado de San Miguel, where Yvon and I indulged in tapas. There is a series of photos at dusk, my camera broken down in Madrid and was buried there, I bought a new small camera and discovered that it was quite good at dusk shots, so I took a tour explicitly for those.
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Gran Via and the Palacio de Communicaciones (51 photos) - The Gran Via is Madrid's shopping street par excellence. Loaded with one ornate building after another, my interest lay not at all in the shopping, but in the vistas and the sheer architectural exuberance of the thing. It made me think of Paul Simon singing about "Angels in the Architecture". This gallery continues down from the Gran Via and into the Palacio de Communicaciones, another really ornate palace that was open to the public, and which had a viewing gallery on the upper floors. I sort of never figured out what this white carved pile is for -- I mean, is it a museum, offices, what? I couldn't tell, but we did sort out how to get up to the top, and there took a whack of photos of the surrounding area.
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Retiro (84 photos) - This area on the eastern side of the central city contains many of the city's premier art galleries. This gallery is the result of several wanderings into this area, and includes some street scenes, the fabulous CaixaForum, art galleries, and broad streetscapes. It also shows the Reina Sofia art gallery, the Atocha Railway Station (with its astonishing number of turtles!). This gallery includes two visits to Atocha, one to view the station, and another when we actually took the train to Seville, and thus, the gallery concludes with a few photos out the window at buildings in suburbs as we left town.
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Buen Retiro Park (36 photos) - This area on the eastern side of the central city borders the large and splendid Parque del Retiro, the Reina Sofia art gallery, the Atocha Railway Station (with its astonishing number of turtles!). This gallery includes two visits to Atocha, one to view the station, and another when we actually took the train to Seville, which includes a few photos out the window at buildings in suburbs.
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Palacio and areas west (90 photos) - On the western edge of the cental city is found the Palacio Real, or the Royal Palace of Madrid. This group of photos documents two separate walks we took over to the area, though we never went into the Palacio itself. We explored some gardens nearby, the Almuneda Cathedral, and many other churches towards the western part of the city core. Though this gallery is heavy on churches, it also includes the modern and demure ABC Museum, and some lovely squares.
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Casa de Campo (27 photos) - Further west than the Palacio is a large park called the Casa de Campo. We took the metro there for a brief sojourn, and had some nice views of the city, and saw a poorly-attended race involving eco-cars, but a storm came over us and we were forced to head back to the city.
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Barrio (Near North) (18 photos) - This area, just a bit up from the Gran Via, was where we spent quite a bit of our liesure time. Chueca holds most of the city's gay nightlife, so we were walking up this way quite a bit in the evening, but we also took in a free concert up this way, and went more than once to a restaurant called El Barrio, which was interesting for Yvon because he may be distantly related to Barrios from Spain. This small group of photos essentially didn't really go anywhere else, so here they are.
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Northern Building Hunt (68 photos) - Yvon came with me as we took the subway north to the Nuevos Ministerios exit, and then walked up the Paseo de la Castellana, looking to spy the many tall buildings that line this street. The neighbourhood was a bit bleak, and the buildings did not generally meet the street well, opting instead to pose themselves apart from other structures, as if nothing else was around. Nonetheless, individually, they could be quite beautiful. I was pleased by the break in the weather, which allowed me to capture most of these in the sun, though the sky was intermittently cloudy. After we reach the hospital at the Begona metro stop, we took the subway to an LRT farther north, to Las Tablas, where we took an LRT to the Fuenta de la Mora stop to see a residential building that had been featured in architectural magazines. This neighbourhood had a bleak, unfinished air to it, an dI wondred if the real estate crisis in Spain had altered or slowed plan for development. This gallery ends with the odd but interesting Torres Blancas, which was not really in the north, but in the far east of the city.
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Transit Shots (17 photos) - Shots of the subway, and one LRT line in the north that we took.
