SPAIN - Madrid (2001)

Madrid: 8.04.2001

This time around the touring load was lower -- just two countries, Canary Islands and Mauritius -- and we would be through in 8 days. But the routing was pretty convoluted: Muscat - Zurich - Madrid - Grand Canary, and each of the following legs equally wobbly! However, the silver lining was that we had around 8 hours of free time ar Madrid and would be able to take a peek at the same city.

I had boarded the Zurich flight from Muscat at midnight. The same flight, stopping at Dubai, picked up my colleague Rashid. Swissair seems to be a good airline; good plane and staff. In any case, I am never able to sleep much on flights. My co-passengers were practically all white, mostly Swiss and some Germans. My neighbour was a German who had come to troubleshoot for a firm in Muscat that had bought his machinery. In the end, he has not been paid for his visit, so he was quite unhappy. On top of that, he had left his coat in the departure lounge. Temperature in Zurich was said to be 4 degC and he had to go on to Stuttgart by train, so he was a fairly tense man overall.

When we landed at Zurich at 6.30 am, it was just dawn. The sky was overcast, it was drizzling and the temperature was actually 4 degC. My friend gave one last shiver and ran out of the exit.

We freshened up here and boarded the flight to Madrid at 8.30 am. I was trying to send home an e-mail from a free internet kiosk, but the hotmail box had expired and by the time I realised that and created a new one, it was time to go.........

We landed at Madrid at 10.30 am with a bracing 14 degC. From the air the countryside looked beautiful, like a painted scene. The fields, mostly polygons, are separated by white roads are either uniformly green or dusty white. The ploughing or hoeing marks on the green fields look exactly like brush-strokes on canvas.

The day was very sunny and the air slightly chilly -- an excellent combination. Our continuing flight to Canary would be in the domestic sector, so we went out through immigration and decided to leave our bags in the cloak-room. The cloakroom girl was very helpful in suggesting that the best course of action for us would be to take the bus to the centre of the city (Columbus Square) and maybe walk around the place and have lunch somewhere. So we took the bus, a huge spanking new luxury coach with luggage racks and all, better than any taxi that we could have imagined, and got dropped at Columbus Square........

Madrid is a city where the old architecture is still preserved well and also in use. Columbus Square has a huge pillar with the statue of Columbus on top and a couple of massive stone blocks with writings commemorating the discovery of America. The avenues are wide, lined with flowers and trees, and the pedestrian walking areas (pavements and promenades) are very generously allotted. Shops line the streets but were closed on account of it being a Sunday. From the main road, small side-roads (all one-way) lead off at regular inetervals, lined by tall old-fashioned buildings with huge doors and small wrought-iron railing verandahs. It's very quiet in the side streets and with very few people around today, it seemed quite possible that suddenly a Spanish gentlemen dressed in all his finery will just walk around the corner!

There were some museums -- historical and art -- within walking distance but we decided that we had no time to spend inside buildings. Each place deserves a couple of hours and in a city with 50-60 art galleries and 20 odd museums, we might as well not try. We were wondering what to do in this time available (very few people speak English, so getting local advice was next to impossible!) when we suddenly saw a double-decker with an open top, driving slowly along, the upper deck occupied by a few passengers gazing around. Bingo! This was the thing for us -- see the main sights in the city in a short time, on a sunny day with a cool breeze blowing.

It took some half-an-hour to work out where the nearest stop was ("Por favor, no comprehendo" all over the place), which was the other side of the Square. Traffic here is very organised and jaywalkers are likely to get run over. Three-lane high-speed roads, pedestrian crossings with go-no-go -- all the shine of a European capital. So we worked our way around the square to the bus stop and boarded the top of an open-top double-decker. This fleet of buses keep going around on a fixed route with stops. We did not want to get down, but people would usually get off at some place they wanted to see and again get onto another such bus that came along, on the same ticket and any time during the day. A good system.
On a Sunday morning at 1.00 pm, the bus stop was not crowded. Here the sun rises at 8.00 am and sets at 9.00 pm, so lunch is usually at around 3.00 pm. We could see that all the roadside cafes with tables and chairs spread out in the sun were still waiting for customers to come and order their coffee or tortilla or whatever. Anyway we got on paying 1600 pesos ($8/-) per head and sat high up, enjoying the breeze. We had been handed a city map with marked stops and there were headphones with every seat through which a guide's voice, matched with the movement of the bus, was available in the language of your choice. We passed the National Library, art museums, churches, the Royal Palace, Botanical Gardens and some more ten sites I have lost track of. Beautiful architecture, not only at these points, but at the street-corners and roundabouts, in arches and doorways, in pillars and water-spouts. Very very impressive. And a very clean city.
We went hunting for lunch for something typically Spanish, but were finally scared off, even from the relatively harmless 'paella' (which is a rice dish with vegetable garnishing and either chicken or shrimps on top). Finally we dived into a 'safe' Chinese joint. However, the chow-mein was like pasta and the shrimps were with shells and the tastes definitely onion-and-garlic-ish. Not much Chinese about the place apart from the waiter, who was also Madrid-born in all likelihood.

By this time (in fact while we were on the bus-top itself), we could see the 'Sunday-enjoyer' crowds on the streets, which seemed to include everybody. The roadside cafes were full of warbling couples, families were pushing prams around on the sunny sidewalks, young twosomes were smooching on benches and children were skateboarding all over the place. We also found people asleep in public parks and one girl stretched out on a sunlit bench, mildly snoring away. Making out on the grassy slopes also seemed to be quite common and a universally accepted thing. Clearly it was a h-o-l-i-d-a-y and these people were not the ones to spend it at home.

Madrid is as hep as any European metro in dress and style. However, the favourite of women with good figures (which seemd to be most of them) seemd to be skin-tight nylon tights and short tops, or fairly mini skirts. Very colourful dressing too. Full of the joy of life. A lot of men pierce their ears. Some piratical blood, maybe.

By 4.30 pm, we ran out of steam. The first-level sightseeing was over, and there was not enough time (nor energy) to get into museums and palaces. We vaguely remembered that there was a flight somewhere around 5.00 pm to Canary, which, if caught, will gain us 3 hours. We caught a bus back to the airport, collected our luggage, huffed and puffed through miles (literally!) of corridors and found the flight trundling to the runway. Anyway, we spent 3 hours unwinding in the business class lounge, to find which it took us half-an-hour in the first place.

I made a quick call home, found that booze was free in the business class lounge and organised a glass of Irish whiskey while setting out to catch up on my journal.

LINK TO MADRID ALBUM

.