June 20 to 21—Being Disciplined and Getting Ready to Leave Madrid

Dear Family and Friends,

Last Wednesday in Madrid, June 20, Martha decided to get down to business, spending most of the day working on her book, adding about 1,500 words (bringing her close to 34,000 now), while also doing some laundry in prep for departure. Dani decided not to waste a second of her next-to-last day in Madrid, so headed out on her own to the Naval Museum and the Museum of Decorative Arts.

The Naval Museum, full of school children tour groups, contained the vast history of the Spanish Armada and sea voyages. There were rooms furnished as the Capt’ns’ quarters to give the viewer the idea that they were sitting on board sipping tea from fancy china. The museum housed about 150 models of the sailing vessels detailing the changes over the last 600 years. An interesting room housed native weaponry from conquered lands on one wall, and the weapons of the Spanish troops on the other wall; spears and leather armor versus guns, sharp steal, and chainmail breastplates. Most intriguing to Dani were the many maps of the world being pieced together. The first known map of the Americas, dated 1500, was on display, and she found it quite amazing how much was already known of the Eastern coast in just those short eight years of Spain's understanding of the Western hemisphere. The later (1688) three-foot tall globe of the known world still had South America at a strong tilt towards the right, but by then both coasts of the Americas were well detailed.

Just around the block was the Museum of Decorative Arts, which permitted photography if done without a flash. This museum was dedicated to fancy houses of the Madrid wealthy in the last 500 years, showcasing kitchens, bedrooms, womens’ lounging rooms, furniture, fabrics, and trinkets—all crafted for function and with considerate form. The walls were covered predominantly with gilded wallpaper, but one room had decorated leather walls. Steph would have loved this museum, and Dani contemplated taking one of the blue plates for Betsy!

Dani returned to the apartment to make a fantastic paella lunch from a bag purchased at the grocer’s. Full of little langostinas (lobster-type shellfish), gambas (shrimpies), white fish, mussels, and small ribbed-shelled oyster-like critters, it was even better than we could have imagined. After the hearty lunch, we headed out together to the Museo de Bellas Artes, and did not have nearly enough time to enjoy this fantastic collection of paintings, including many by Goya, Murillo, Seghers, Ribera, Morales, Van Loo, Carnichero, Muelich (and other Flemish artists), and El Greco.… It is quite a gem of a museums, although it did not contain the range of ‘masterpieces by the masters’ that were housed at El Prado. We were thrilled to be able to take photos without flash in this museum, and take home examples of some of the compositions and topics that we had been studying this past month. In all, we were greatly impressed and sad not to get to see the third floor’s offerings before the museum closed at 7 PM.

By now, we were out of the apartment, and it was tempting to wander the streets some more, but ol’ Martha wanted to get some more done before calling it ‘a day’. So we headed home, enjoyed some tortellini for dinner, and listened to the neighbors and their loudness for the next-to-last time.

Last day in Madrid, June 21, Martha and Dani are getting better at this ‘up early’ process, and were up around 9 AM once again. Today was our day to return one final time to El Prado to listen to the audio descriptions in English of the paintings. We went from room to room, learning more about the history of the paintings—their topics, the artist, who commissioned the work and why—and generally enjoyed spending time with the art one last time. We found a few rooms that we had not explored before, and even a temporary exhibit of all of the Goya paintings commissioned by Real Fabrica for tapestries that we had seen earlier in the week! A nice way to make that learning experience more complete, indeed.

From el Prado, we returned to the apartment, a bit nostalgic already for Madrid—its smells, people, views; its deeply-rooted culture; and its history flavored with the good, the bad, and the way Inquisitional ugly.

Unfortunately, we were up way too late packing, but our packs were soon loaded down, ready for the morning and our attempt to make the 10:30 AM bus to Salamanca. Bye Madrid!! We’ll miss you!

Love,

Martha and Dani