Spain Road Trip: Days 16-17 (Madrid)

     We left Granada on Friday morning and drove toward Madrid, which is about 4 hours north.  Did you know Spain is the world's largest producer of olives?  On this drive, it seemed obvious . . . one passes what must be tens of thousands of acres of olive orchards.  They are vast.  How do they harvest so many olives, especially since many trees are on fairly hilly terrain?  They must need to bring in crews of thousands of people.  Here is what it looks like along the road in all directions for miles and miles and miles:

     We stopped in Toledo, which is about an hour south of Madrid.  Toledo is home of El Greco, and a very historic (and steep) place.  There is a cathedral there that is considered by some to be the best in Spain.  It is full of treasures and famous works of art.  We found a parking spot and walked into the town to see the cathedral and other sites of Toledo:

     Then it was time to leave Toledo and head up to Madrid.  There was a period around this time when El Generalisimo's mood-O-meter was reaching the dangerously-low red zone.  Details are unimportant.  Suffice it to say that it involved urine on her feet (not her own) and bad directions into Madrid (we are navigating through Spain by hand because our French phone with navigation won't work, despite umpteen visits to the Orange cell phone store near Vaison and the assurance that it would work).  But soon her mood-O-meter had returned to near-normal readings and we found our abode for the next 5 days:  a fantastic (though small) apartment right in the heart of a residential neighborhood in central Madrid. Wow!  A courtyard with clotheslines, and a tiny balcony that looks out onto the street.  Our front door is painted with graffiti and we are minutes away from lots of great things.  Few tourists around here!  Did you know that Madrid is the third largest city in all of Europe?  It's huge!  Our address is Calle de Valarde 20 if you care to mapquest it.  Here is a photo of our front door and interior stairway and courtyard:

Our Front Door

The Apartments are Too Small to Have Clothes Dryers Anyway

We ate dinner at 10:00 p.m., as is the custom.

     In the morning, Ed went to work out at the nearby gym, called V-35.  According to one website, V-35 is not "the biggest or the most luxurious gym in town [but] it's definitely the gayest and known for sporting the capital's hottest bodies."  He returned to the apartment at 10:00 to find El Generalisimo and all the others still sound asleep.  Here is a picture of breakfast, which occurred near lunchtime:

     Then we took the metro to one of Madrid's most important museums -- the Centro del Arte Reina Sofia.  We saw many Picasso pictures, including Guernica and other paintings by important painters we had never heard of.  Here are a couple of photos of the afternoon (no photos allowed inside the museum):

Metro

Outside the Museum

     Tomorrow:  Watching tennis at the Madrid Open!