Madrid in January Day 4 Botanical garden and back to El Prado

On Tuesday morning it’s cold, but the Real Jardin Botanico is free from 10 until 13 on Tuesdays and we want to visit El Prado again in the afternoon so we get to the botanical garden at just past 10 o’clock. It is indeed cold (I may have mentioned that) so out first stop is at the invernaderos, the greenhouses. The first is a little less chilly than outside and the middle one, the semi-tropical one, is a delightful mix of warmth and humidity. All the greenhouses host interesting plants, some even flowering and the last one is also the oldest. Under the metal grilles in the floor they used to put manure because the fermentation was enough to warm the place. 

Coming out of the greenhouses one notices the difference in temperature, but we head up to the Bonsai Terrace, well, to the several Bonsai terraces. Not my favourites, in general, bonsais, but these are something special due to their shape, dimensions and age. Our favourite is probably the strawberry tree, especially because, despite the cold, it’s flowering.

We go inside the pavilion where there’s a small photographic exhibition of nature in the Botanical Garden and Retiro park. The photos would be interesting even if it weren’t the ideal place to warm up – the heating is on and the sun is streaming in, and I thaw out. 

January is not the best time of the year to visit a botanical garden, but even in the ‘dead’ of winter it’s evident that this botanical garden is well thought out and carefully tended to. Despite the temperature it’s getting on for 12 o’clock when we realize it’s time to be getting back. We proceed in the same way as the day before, a light lunch and coffee followed by a short rest and then back out, where the temperature has improved immensely, to El Prado once again.

There are still people around but it’s nowhere near as crowded as on Saturday morning, plus, I have a plan of action of what we want to see. There are no queues at the ticket office so after a brief pause at security at the Jeronimo Puerta, we head for the area right next to it, rooms 55-58 where there were too many people on Saturday morning and there are several pictures we are interested in. 

First of all, the Garden of Delights by Heronimius Bosch. It’s no surprise that it attracts a lot of visitors: it is amazing, especially considering when it was painted. We also have a look at the other Bosch paintings in the same room before moving on. Other favourites in these rooms are by Patinir, Drurer and Breugel but for me the painting which absolutely takes my breath away in real life, even after watching a programme about it on screen, is the “Deposition” by Van Der Weyden, perhaps worth the whole trip to Madrid just in itself.

We have a short rest in Sala delle Muse after spending over an hour in these rooms, and then have a quick look at the XIX century rooms before concentrating on Goya in the area of the museum near Porta Morilla, on floors 0, 1 and 2. It’s a lot of Goya and he’s not our favourite so we don’t linger long here and have another rest before completing the visit to the 1st floor which we started on Saturday. There’s a lot of Rubens, which we treat in the same way as Goya, but there are also many gems by Ribera, El Greco and Maino. Just before we leave the “Amigos di Jesus” painting by Antonio Granell stays with us for a long time.

This time our visit to El Prado was about three hours, and we’re still standing, just. It was a lot more successful than Saturday. Maybe on Saturday we were still tired from the journey, certainly this time there weren’t so many people and that helped a lot.

We go back to base for a well-deserved rest and some food and then go out to visit Madrid ‘by night’, or as near as we get to ‘by night’, since it is dark even though just past 8pm. We wander around Puerta del Sol, head for Plaza Mayor, then down Cava Baja and back along Calle Toledo to Plaza Mayor where the moon awaits us. It’s chilly but nowhere near as cold as in the morning, and pleasant, people strolling, lights in windows, shops shutting up.

Another long, but satisfying, day.