We flew through cotton candy-like clouds before landing in Madrid at 8 AM. The guy in front of us on the plane was reading “The Promise of a Pencil.” I made a note to look that up. We had forgotten that Peggi requested a wheelchair at the airport gate and then we heard a man say my name the way a Spaniard would say my name. I was wheeled to a small bus that cruised around the back of the airport and dropped us off on the street where we waited for a bus (5 E) that took us to Cibeles in the center of the old city.
From there we walked to our hotel near Plaza Santa Ana and they let us in early. We slept for a few hours and headed back out for some café con leche and Tortilla Española. They served the coffee in small glasses, almost too hot hang onto. We had seen signs for an art show, one of those Fundación government sponsored things, when we got off the bus so we hobbled back down to Cibeles. On the any we found another, free, government sponsored, art show by Bernardi Roig, an artist from Palma de Mallorca. The show near Cibeles was a real slice of Spanish culture by José Suarez, a Spanish photographer who went into exile during the Spanish Civil War.
We kept looking up at the Círculo de Bellas Artes building and wondering why no one was up there. When we got up there it was actually more crowded than we had ever seen it and we quickly realized why it didn’t look crowded from the street. They had installed a stainless steel railing around the entire perimeter so you could not possibly get out to the edge. Although only six stories up you can see right out beyond the city, to the mountains and into the country and hillsides where Madrileños celebrated the feast of San Isidro, the scene Goya painted so vividly. And you get a great view of the black domed Metropolis building that is featured in the Grand Vía production credits of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
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