Madrid in January Day 1 El Prado and El Retiro Parque

“It’s been a long hard year” says the song. Well, actually it was a long hard few months but 2024 is now finished and here we are in January, 10th January to be precise, heading for Bergamo Orio al Serio for the flight to Madrid. It’s a just-after-lunch flight, so no early rising. The airport is not too busy and the flight is full but leaves on time. It’s a beautiful day for mid-January in the north of Italy. I feared snow or at least rain when I booked but it’s pleasant.

We land in Madrid early but by the time we’ve taxied down several kilometers of runaways we get off the plane on time. Madrid airport is enormous and so mid afternoon in mid-January it feels empty.

As a special offer with the accommodation Booking.com provided a free taxi from the airport to our accommodation. Madrid airport is enormous but our taxi driver was insistent on his where-to-meet instructions by whatsapp message and voice call and since I can count up to two in Spanish we were in the right place Llegadas Sala dos in front of the farmacia at the right time. A taxi wasn’t essential for us since I’d found out about the airport shuttle bus, it was undeniably more relaxing.

We are wearing winter coats. Fausto our taxi-driver is wearing a t-shirt and the car thermometer shows 19° C. Fausto leaves us in a car park under Puerta del Sol with clear instructions about how to walk the 3 minutes to our accommodation in a pedestrian area once we reach the top of the lift. If we even listened to the instructions, we have anyway forgotten them by the time we get out of the lift, I’m a little disorientated for a moment, so we ask Google maps which takes us on three sides of a rectangle to the short 3-minute away fourth side and our accommodation. Who knows why but Google maps acts is if Puerta del Sol doesn't exist, not even calculating that you can walk through it. Or perhaps it's scared of the bear.

We settle in, eat a few biscuits, taralli and fruit that we’d brought with us and then head out to explore. Calle Montera, where we are staying, is right in the centre  and heading in the opposite direction from Puerta del Sol takes us across Gran Via and then in search of the Museo del Romanticismo where I buy the Tarjeta Annual Museos Estatales for 36.06 euros. This gives me free access to several museums in Madrid including El Prado and Reina Sofia as well as others in Cartagena, Valencia and Toledo. Andrea doesn’t get one as most of the museums provide free entry to those over 65 anyway.

The people at Museo del Romanticismo are friendly and we soon complete the task. We stop to look at Mercado Barcelò but some stalls have already shut for the evening and we don’t find anything special so we continue on to Mercadona where we stock up with basics for breakfast, artichokes and some fish as well as Mahou local beer and a bottle of Vermouth. With the fillets of fish ‘corvina’ prepared by the fishmonger at Mercadona our supper is soon ready and we call it a day.

I wake quite early but lose time complaining on Whatsapp about the lack of Wifi, Smart TV and dining table chairs. Breakfast is delayed but I end up with an apology and a promise of a chairs, a10% refund and 20% off a future stay. We shall see. 

It’s a fine and mild morning and just a short walk along Calle de Jeronimo past interesting establishments and fine palacios to El Prado museum. Instead of being very early, as planned, we get there at about ten. The line of people waiting for access on the steps is already going in and there’s no-one at the ticket office where my Tarjeta Annual gives me a ticket. Andrea has to validate the reduced price ticket bought online.

Security is like airport security and so there is a short delay due to people (including us) who thought it wouldn’t be so strict. We start on the floor below – floor 0, where there are the medieval paintings, to go in chronological order. There’s an interesting reconstruction of the frescoes of a chapel, and many beautiful medieval paintings.

On the other side of the gallery I glimpse the El Prado Mona Lisa so we go and have a look at that, since we’d seen several documentaries about this ‘copy’ of the one in Paris. We are slow, and by the time we reach the Raffaello room there are lots of people around. We want to look at the Durer paintings and the Botticelli but the sheer mass of people heading for the famous El Bosch is off-putting. We are already almost tired, so sit for a while in the rest area, and when we get up the museum really is swarming with people so we escape up to the Second floor, which is almost empty.

The change of period wakes us up. There are the Brugel El Vecchio and Rubens ‘Senses’ paintings, those by Clara Peteers, a surprising painting of a cheeky owl as choir master of birds and the fascinating processions by Denis van Alsloot.

A short staircase takes us up to the Treasures – intricate and decorated glassware and the equally elaborate containers. We head back to the ground floor, doge hordes of people, avoid the cafè due to the prices and go up the escalators to the cloister which is empty and quiet.

We stop to decide what to do. It’s quarter past twelve so we’ve been in El Prado for just two hours but we both feel exhausted. Why is looking at art, despite the fact we enjoy it, more tiring than climbing a mountain I wonder? We decide to resist a little while longer, mainly due to the sheer amount of paintings we haven’t seen. On the way down we have a quick look at the temporary exhibition “Darse la mano. Escultura y color en el Siglo de Oro”. But there are too many people in small spaces so once again resolve to return. The area around rooms 55/58 is still packed so we got up to the 1st floor. Here, some of the highlights are the paintings by Fra Angelico and the Caravaggio as well as the Meinas by Velazquez mentioned in various programmes about thePrado that we watched before visiting. But, we agree we need to return when it’s quieter.

It's nice to be out in the fresh air and we go home for lunch, coffee and a rest. 

In the afternoon we go out again, along Calle de Alcalà to Fontana de Cibeles. 

We decide it would be too much to try to explore Palacio de Cibeles and so walk down Paseo del Prado, turn left before the Prado and go into the Parque del Retiro. It’s a mild afternoon and although no park is at its best in January Parque del Retiro is very pleasant indeed. There are many people around, but the spaces are too large for it to feel crowded. We admire the sculpted cypresses in the Parterre area, and the boating lake. 

The sun is lower in the sky and we still have to find something for dinner so we walk back in the general direction of the apartment stopping at San Anton market, which offers nothing, although the area is interesting, full of independent and curiosity-inviting shops. We end up back at Mercadona, for solomillo and more artichokes, mostly, and arrive back at past six, finished for the day.