Madrid

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Written October 15, 2025; Visited October 4 – 5, 2025

We flew from Porto to Madrid to meet up with Leesa and Mark. Leesa was the one who “caused” this excursion to northern Spain and she who did much of the planning/suggested itinerary for this visit.

By chance, my niece Christina was in Madrid from Guatemala when we arrived and we were able to meet her for a drinks our first evening and for a visit to the Reina Sophia (museum) the following day.

Having oysters at the Mercado de San Miguel with Stina. Grab a glsss of wine and eat around. So fun. Especially with Stina!

Museo Reina Sofia

Turns out one has to get tickets ahead of time to visit just about anything in Madrid. This surely is true with all the museums. I managed to get 3 tickets for Reina Sofia and Christina joined us.

I had very much wanted to see this museum as it has the famous painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso. If you are not familiar with this painting, it is quite large and is Picasso’s lament to the tragedy in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

One can look at this painting for quite a long time and continue to find things you missed. The painting is over 11 feet tall and 25 feet across. Yes, it is in grays, black and white.

I had not realized there was an amazing gallery of other art leading to the period of civil war and post civil war.

There was a whole wall of war era posters. This one struck we given the context of my country right now.
I have always been a fan of Salvador Dali and was surprised how much of his work was in the museum. Jim and I own a lithograph of this piece, Endless Enigma (1938). Very cool to see the actual painting.
I kept coming back to this piece by Dali. From early in his career titled Figure at the Window. One can begin to see the movement of line that comes into his later work.
I did not know this artist, Josep de Torgores. This piece Couple on the Beach (1922) was incredibly soothing to me. I love the fluidity and color and total relaxation it invokes.

Who knows what was on the other floors. We’d had enough museum and needed fresh air. We also took a nice walk in the park after the museum.

We really enjoyed wandering the park, looking at birds, flowers and just chilling a bit.

Flamenco!

Leesa had gotten tickets to a flamenco show for the evening, including dinner. We had a lovely meal and front row seats. The dancers were quite good, the singers as well, and the guitar player. There was nothing not to love!

The cantadors were excellent. Each had a wonderful, soulful voice. All of the performers are hired for a month or so and then move on to other venues.
Without the guitar player, it would not be complete. Interestingly, there was no drum. When we’ve seen flamenco before, it always had a drum as well.
Monica Prado was our female dancer. Each did two pieces.
I also have video of Monica but we’ll just let you watch Eduardo. I kept thinking he might sweat on me.

We had a short visit in Madrid before heading off to Cambados on the Galician coast in far northwestern Spain. But, we’ll be back to Madrid at the end of our Spanish adventure to pick up where we left off.

The daring trio, Mark, Leesa and Jim visiting with the fisherman. So many people to meet.

More to come as we venture across northern Spain!

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