hollowsolid: GT-Two Madrid

Life is life. Banananana.

7am breakfast at hotel – even though it wasn’t included, we were offered it for free ‘just to try it’. It was not great at all and the server, a real life Mater Dolorosa, was dour indeed. Absolutely not worth €25 each / €100 per day when there were excellent cafes and bakeries within 5mins walk offering much better fare for quarter of the price. Shitty hotel breakfasts – you can’t give them away.

S sick with the head cold we’d all eventually endure, opted to sleep the morning out in her big hotel bed. Me, M & D had a 10am start for Prado Day2. A TINY Mango Passion & Lemon Fluffy for €10 at Café Prado. We declined, but took photos because the expression “Lemon Fluffy” is a funny thing and the price was just as ridiculous.

Café Prado Sans Lemon Floofy

My first exposure to El Greco. More in depth on Goya, particularly his dark paintings which were truly haunting. Back to the hotel where I wangled a room upgrade for the parents. Old room was dark, long and had no shower door. New room came with a balcony and natural light. Never a better intercession was made.

Gracias Signor Vino!

Delighted to have S join us for Sofia Reina 2 in the afternoon

Returnica

Even before you get stuck into the mesmerising details. the sheer scale of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica is overwhelming. Here's an excellent resource to dive deeper into all things Guernica.

Sweltering hot day, tapas al fresco streetside with an unexpectedly very strong Belgian beer. Unrequested egg tapas in the sunlight becoming less desirable for every second spent in the heat. Wine for the ladies. Then wine for me too. A fotowalk for me PM. First visit of Signor Vino who would become a regular visitor on this tour, like an off-license Santa Clause shinning his way up to our balcony to deposit good cheer in the form of refreshing white wine, and sometimes, oddly, cripps. A glorious Summer evening walk up the Paseo del Prado, brought me nostalgic towards the Paseo del Prado in Havana – up to this point my favourite boulevard in the whole wide world.

In a city this hot, shade is the thing. And Paseo del Prado provides glorious arboreal shade at any hour. There’s a lovely, neighbourly culture in Madrid of stopping, sitting, chatting, all facilitated by thoughtfully appointed and plentifully sprinkled sit spots overlooked by ancient shade. It’s common during the hottest siesta hours of 3-5pm to see folks of all professional persuasions and none (shout out!) to be perched with a small beer, languidly refreshing themselves or just plain avoiding exertion. A solo siesta is totally fine too, Madrileños/Madrileñas are very comfortable in their skin. Madrid is all about the connections and everyone is so well turned out.

We were on our way to Barracuda MX in the Retiro neighbourhood. This chef’s story is that his was the first Mexican restaurant ever to earn a Michelin star in Europe. That was pre-Covid and that spot has since closed down. But this current iteration is absolutely top notch.

A truly cracking Mexican - the first great Mexican meal I've ever had without rice, without cheese, without wheat. Maybe that means the first good Mexican I've had outside of the US. We started with crazy smoky, spicy margaritas and they were very, very good.

Spicy!

There’s a half page on the menu devoted solely to different types of guacamole – which I have to say was the thing that turned my head when looking at booking it 3 or 4 weeks prior. The chips and guac that landed before our starters were incredibly good. Smoky, spicy, creamy, citrusy, flavours and flavour combinations I’d never even dreamt of – all on top of the freshest, sweetest tortilla chips. [My culinary vocabulary fails me – see descriptions from the menu in square brackets for a better idea]. S had recently, randomly expressed interest in visiting a Taco Bell at some point in her lifetime. Apparently they’re opening their first Irish branch soon. Anyways, these nextlevelheavenly tacos have ruined every possible iteration of future taco for S and the rest of us. [Bonito Chicarrón Tacos w/serrano chile emulsion & pickled red cabbage |Rib-Eye Tacos w/toreado padrón peppers & morita chile sauce | Al Pastor Iberian Pork Tacos w/tomatillo & chipotle sauce, onion, cilantro & pineapple | Carnitas Tacos Iberian pork confit, avocado & jalapeño chili sauce | Wagyu Brisket Tacos w/green tomatillo & morita chili sauce | Grilled Sweet Potato Tacos w/jalapeño kefir, crispy kale, and mexican seeds]

Grilled Seabass A La Talla w/red guajillo adobo & green poblano chili adobo

I had one of the best fish dishes I’ve ever had – a full side of Sea Bass grilled Mexican style, covered again with all sorts of stuff I couldn’t possibly describe, with more indescribably tasty small pots of stuff on the side.

Whatever it was, it's gone

M and S had grilled Short Rib w/green tomatillo & beans sauce, D went with Grilled Bone Marrow w/Red Toreado Tuna Tartare corn tostadas & serrano chili emulsion. One of the girls' last meals before we left home was the inspired result of an empty pre-holiday pantry, a scrambling together of available ingredients to feed my family something more nutritious than a Pistachio McFlurry. I came up with Peanut Butter & Jelly Quesadillas. They really were not impressed at the time and the mindblowingly delicious quesadillas available here did serious damage to my already faltering culinary reputation [Blue Corn Huitlacoche Quesadillas w/charred tomatillo sauce, guajillo chile emulsion & ranch-style cream] A hazard which I re-experienced the following night with Papo e Ceci. Turns out one person’s yum is another’s WTF.

"Aren't we made to be crowded together, like leaves?"

Public Service Announcement: unabashedly gushy descriptions of our great Grand Tour meals will be a feature of the coming dispatches. Reviewing the entire trip, the food and the communal meals are as much of a highlight as any of the other culture. As a family we’ve always loved sitting down together over a good meal in a hospitable environment. We make a huge effort to eat together, even at home, which according to the girls is exceptional among their peers. I believe that communal good food - sometimes with wine, and all the conversations and discussions, debriefs and disagreements of the day which flow in waves around the table from those simple ingredients, is the cornerstone for all culture, making it a key element for any cultural trip. And it has always been so for our family. Ref "Best gnocchi in Oslo?" Bottom line, we don’t intend to be flexy at all. These meals are huge treats for us. Never indulgence, always riding the waves of cultural research. This is obviously why our first good meal in Spain was a Mexican meal. Kind of like your first meal as a tourist in England being an Irish Stew with boxty and coddle to start and haggis for dessert. As with all elements of culture, the colonist oppressors get to bring home the tastiest morsels. Or get poisoned by them where they live. Dodgy coddle = ultimate revenge. We mixed it up throughout the trip with Spanish and Italian deli picnics on hotel balconies or hotel floors, attempts at frugality, forever trying to recreate a legendary kerbstone picnic one glorious September afternoon on Ischia island. Miel, lune, media lunas, spoon.

The Blue & Orange Grand Tour Plates

The original Grand Tourists were a bit grabby, notorious for pillaging paintings, sculptures, antiquities, bits off the Coliseum and bringing them home as “souvenirs”. We picked up 2 baby blue and burnt orange enamel plates, some tardis-y Tupperware and some gorgeous hammered tin implements in Madrid as our souvenirs early on the trip and they served us well for ad hoc picnics everywhere ever since. A buzzy stroll (not the streetlights, not the fireflies - us) back up the Prado to our hotel and happily to bed with a bellyful of Mexican.

Umami, the place up the street

OSOM the place across from Umami, the place up the street

The following morning: smoothies and freshly baked cinnamon rolls from Umami again the breakfast of choice for the girls. Eaten at a fountain on the Prado first thing. Prado Day 3.

Beautiful Summer morning sunlight on Paseo del Prado

At this point we’re getting good at proceeding straight to popular rooms or exhibits straight out of the traps on museum opening. It’s amazing the difference 5 minutes in a sparsely populated room with a masterpiece can do for you – that compared to sharing space with multiple international flashmobs and their intrusive hardware on guided tours. The first of those tours will have made its way to the outer reaches of the museum usually within 10-15mins of opening. We’re also getting better at drawing parallels or spotting cross references. E.g. Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son | Ruben’s Saturn. Or Goya’s antiwar 3rd of May and its influence on the form of another antiwar masterpiece - Picasso’s Guernica. I “discovered” and fell in love with Goya on this visit to Madrid. You’d need to research for a month and come back for a full week straight of visits to his work to come close to getting your arms around his life’s work. Amazing artist.

Goya - Drowning Dog (1820 - 1823)

M brought S to Goya’s dark room (she had missed it yesterday) while me and D headed back to Hieronymus Bosch for another head melt. All that done, as a follow up to the previous evenings Mexicanidad, there was a beautiful exhibition on Guadalupe of Mexico – the first globalised Marian image. Some of the exhibits were stunningly ornate and intricate - amazing what holy things can be done with hammered tin and brass. Imagine “the bang and the clatter as an angel hits the ground” The Marian icons coming out of Mexico in the 15th and 16th centuries prominently featured the radial solar mandorla- the almond-shaped radiating oval that surrounds holy folks in moments of divine transfiguration or glory, symbolising the intersection of heaven and earth.

Definitely makes for some visually stunning artefacts which stop you in your tracks – missionary / visionary artists doing their jobs I guess. Because it’s the Prado, I have no visual aide-mémoire. So here’s a link. “So far, so close: Guadalupe, Mexico, in Spain casts an unprecedented gaze on the artistic dialogue between Latin America and Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and shows how the Virgin of Guadalupe was reinterpreted, reproduced and venerated on both continents”

A well earned vegetarian lunch for me & M. The place, literally around the corner from our hotel, was exquisite and very reasonable. A long fotowalk for me in the afternoon. I was supposed to be looking for new hiking shoes but got highly distracted taking photos, tying one hand behind my back like a masochist, forcing myself to use a prime lens for street photography. Girls went shopping and had a very successful trip.

A beautiful balcony picnic of sourdough bread, gouda cheese, fresh tomatoes, cuke, olives & anchovies and CRIPPS set up stealthily by Signor Vino (who also dropped off some wine!) as we siesta’d.

Later we schlepped up the hill for some delicious Gelato at a Patagonian (?) Gelaterie up the street past the Jazz club we never visited.

CRIPPS!

Our last day full day in Madrid brought one of the busiest, highlight filled days of the trip. Started with a nutritious early breakfast and great coffee at OSOM. The girls opted again for take away smoothies and fresh cinnamon rolls from Umami bakery up the street which were consumed in the leisurin’ style in the shade of a palm tree on the Prado. Sure what else would we be doin?

Some incredible models of details from Prado masterpieces

Our schedule told us we had tickets to the Thyssen-Bornemiszamuseum | Guide To Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum: Masterpieces & Tips - The Geographical Cure It’s technically a private collection, but it’s exceptionally good. It’s the collection of Baron Heinrich Thyssen and his son Hans (steel magnates, those of the same parish as the Thyssen Krupp elevator company).

S with Lichtenestein POP

At this point we’d become fully naturalised to artistic masterpieces around every corner. We’d maybe become a bit cheeky as we ran through the galleries only stopping when one piece of the abundant art on the walls stopped us in our tracks.

Girls With Rothko

Me With Ross Bleckner

De Goyls With Degas

This collection includes (in order of appearance in my photos) the breathtaking photorealism of Richard Estes, iconic works of Pop Art by Roy Lichtenstein and stunning portraits by Lucien Freud.

Gino Severino - Expansion Of Light (1914)

The Girls Mesmerised By Richard Estes' Photorealism

I’m not fond of the idea of just listing out artists and artworks but I do want to capture some of the sheer volume of iconic art in this collection. I’d recommend anyone go visit any or all 3 of the museums in Madrid for a complete immersion. This list comprises only the artworks that jumped off the wall at me so that I took note of or a photo of: Robert Rauschenberg (who we meet again in Milan); Mark Rothko; Josef Albers;

Georgia O’Keefe - Sun Prairie 1887 Santa Fe 1986 (1925)

Georgia O’Keefe; Edward Hopper’s perfectly enigmatic Hotel Room; George Grosz - Street Scene + Metropolis; Otto Dix; Paul Klee; Max Ernst; Salvador Dali; Joan Miro; Lazslo Maholy-Nagy (whose work we first saw in Prague when we were small); Fernand Léger; Sonia Delaunay; Gino Severini (Expansion Of Light + Woman At Window);

Marc Chagall - The Cock (1928)

Marc Chagall (The Cock); Vladimir Burliuk (Ukrainian Peasant Woman); Wassily Kandinsky (In The Bright Oval); Emil Nolde (Glowing Sunflowers); Lyonel Feininger (Architecture II); Otto Mueller; Mijail Larionov (Blue Nude); Edvard Munch; Joaquin Sorolla!; Alexej Von Jawlensky (Child With Doll - new one on me);

Egon Schiele - Houses On The River (1914)

Egon Schiele (Houses On The River - my first in person brush with Egon, one of my favourite artists); Andre Derain; Vincent Van Gogh; Edgar Degas; Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Winslow Homer;

Martin Johnson-Heade ; John Singer Sargent (Portrait of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland). His Venetian Onion Seller had a huge impact on M; Claude Monet; Camille Pissarro; Paul Gaugin; Henri Martin; Gustave Loiseau; Jean Metzinger; Maximillien Luce; Paul Delvaux

Making My Own Art

On the 3^rd floor lived some of the more classical pieces by Rembrandt; Bronzino; Ricci. Overall, what a collection! There were multiple other side exhibits, all excellent. Isabelle Coixet Collages (A COLLAGE?) was particularly interesting for D who is a budding collage artist.

TBC From Upstairs - It's The Faces That Grab You

M says the 3 days in the Prado got her in the headspace to be mindblown-at Thyssen. After an early start, we were done by 130pm and we all headed back to that nice vegetarian place around the corner for Gazpacho for some quality nutrition and wine to power us through the afternoon.

We hadn’t any tickets pre-purchased for the afternoon but D in her research had spotted a Banksy museum maybe a 40min walk from our hotel. Off we trotted in the extreme heat and got in comfortably, no Q’s, no packed gallery.

Banksy, Mixing Up The Classics

This exhibition shouldn’t have worked but we all really enjoyed it. Because the work is mostly stencilled graffiti, it can be recreated pretty much anywhere. I’m not sure of Banksy’s involvement in the endeavour, nothing referenced on the website. Astute social commentary served up with an anarchic wit. The Israel / Palestine work he completed almost a decade ago particularly resonated. Brings to mind that book: “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always BeenAgainst This” by Omar El Akkad, a frequently referenced source on international complicity with the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Me n D Been Going Through A Tarantino Phase Right Now

Great art is eternal as is the resonance of the recurring, universal themes which continue to capture the imagination of our most imaginative and creative citizens. Banksy’s Warholesque prints of Kate Moss were a fantastically quirky surprise and offered a welcome counterbalance to the geopolitical heaviness as we exited the exhibition - through the giftshop of course.

Home again in the heat, passing a vintage clothes store where the girls did some damage. Back to the hotel for a quick rest, during which the Very Reverend SIGNOR VIGNO arrived silently, enabling the continuation of the tradition of prinks on the balcony with Fontaines blaring. Dinner booked for 8pm at NOI (“noy”) a 20min walk up the Prado.

Walking Up The Prado On The Way To NOI

This place turned out to be the absolute bomb diggedy, the quintessential research reward. Probably one of the best all round dining and hospitality experiences I’ve ever had.

Given that this meal has come up several times when biding time discussing overall highlights for the trip on trains or at ferry terminals, seems we all enjoyed it muy muy immensely. Think Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory meets David Lynch's red curtains, but instead of confectionery think quality Italian food. effortlessly excellent hospitality and opulent, spacious yet relaxed environment.

We were guided towards a round booth table which immediately brought me great joy. Probably predates this trip, but I’ve developed a huge grá for dining at a round table. Within moments of being seated my spidey senses had me smiling like a cheshire cat, knowing that this was going to be a very pleasant and memorable experience. And so it was.

We’d just watched the last season of the Bear before we came out, so we’re obviously steeped in the mechanics of fine dining establishments. I haven't seen Twin Peaks in 20 years, but the memories are strong.

Aperitifs with branded ice cubes, the freshest, softest cheesy bread you can ever imagine (thanks S for the recommendation), grissini that were an event in themselves, the chef’s famous hot tomato dip which is stewed and reduced for days with the goal of mesmerising the palate.

Our excellent server walked us through the menu, giving us options which allowed us to order in standard / half /sharing portions, enabling us to sample a broader selection of the menu. I had Spaghettone Cacio E Pepe (what’s known at home a Papo e Ceci) and honestly, following up from Monday night’s quesadilla thrashing, my culinary reputation was destroyed forever by the quality of this dish.

Of course the girls took the liberty of tasting mine for comparison purposes. There’s a Tagliatelle Ragu Pugliese and a Rigatoni Pummarola on the receipt aswell. Some crazy good desserts to finish, including a Tiramisu and a Cannolo and digestifs. We waddled out of there sideways so much more culinarily enlightened than when we went in. 10/10 would love to say we’ll be back, hopefully we will.

M's Favourite Photo Of The Grand Tour

Walked back along the balmy midnight Prado, streeesing. We were all pulling strenuous and excited shapes in the post-meal photos so we thoroughly let ourselves go and must have enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. What a beautiful street Paseo de Prado is. It’s more than a street. It’s a multi-lane artery, a tree-lined linear park brim-full of all the humanity that happens when a boiling hot city draws its occupants outdoors onto the public stage of Summertime.

"And in the foggy dew, I saw you throwing shapes around / It was underneath the waking of a Dublin City sky"