Dulcinea's Best of Madrid Exploration Kit: Top 10

1. Best Map of Madrid
Knopf City Map Guides: Madrid. The City in Section-by-Section Maps. After trying several other maps, this one was my favorite. The pocket-sized book contains all the main sights of Madrid, along with useful suggestions for each part of the city. Museums are marked.

The maps are very good, but a compass is my secret weapon.

2. Best Small Museum
Sorolla Museum. The painter Sorolla's 1920s home and studio, with a lovely garden outside. This is a good stop for all ages.

Fountain in Sorolla's garden

3. Best Place for Frugal Travelers to Find a Quick Snack
The cafe chain 100 Montaditos. Dozens of locations in Madrid.  Home of the 1-Euro cafe con leche, the 1-Euro beer, and over 100 types of sandwiches on tiny rolls.  Spaniards flock here as well---price/quality ratio is good.

4. Best Souvenirs 
Saffron...
Football memorabilia... from Real Madrid or Team Spain.
Leather jewelry... from the whimsical store Tierra Madrid, located on calle Gerona, 10 (just off Plaza Mayor).

Jewelry from Tierra (items pictured: 4 to 15 Euros).

Spanish fans... 
Postcards from museum gift stores...
Espadrilles from Antigua Casa Crespo (in business since 1863; calle Divino Pastor, 29; metro: San Bernardo) or Casa Hernanz (since 1845; calle Toledo, 18-20; located one block off Plaza Mayor).

Espadrilles from Spain

5. Best Places to Take Small Children
Railroad Museum.  Room to climb (on antique train cars) and relax (in an elegant dining car from the 1920s).

...or big children.

Retiro Park.  Rowboats, buskers, ice-cream stands, fortune-tellers, fountains, a Crystal Palace, and turtles sunning themselves in a pile nearby. Just a few of the pleasures of this park behind the Prado Museum.

Learning to row in Retiro

6. Best Store for Cheap, Useful, Attractive Odds and Ends
Tiger. Art supplies, toys, kitchen wares, reading glasses, notebooks, greeting cards, and other things you didn't think you needed, all with a hint of Scandinavian design. A cross between Ikea and the five-and-dime.  Various locations around town.

7. Most Intriguing Experience
Buying sweets from the Convent Nuns. (See Adventure in the Cloister)

8. Best Outdoor Running Track in Madrid
Located at Parque de Santander (also known as Green Canal) in the the Chamberi neighborhood of Madrid, at the corner of Avenida de Islas Filipinas and Avenida Pablo Iglesias.  Closest metro: Canal, Rios Rosas. Run past blooming lavender bushes, fountains, wisteria vines, and families out for a stroll.  Restrooms and water fountains provided.  Free access to track and park areas; other sports facilities can be rented on a fee basis. Track open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Rubberized 1200-meter running track in Chamberi district

9. Best Exhibition Space
Sala del Canal de Isabel II.  Located in an old water tower that has been renovated for temporary art exhibitions. Check website for current listings. Don't forget to bring passport. Entry is free, but because the tower is located within the headquarters of the city water utility, there is a security checkpoint. Located at calle de Santa Engracia, 125 (metro: Rios Rosas).  Hours: Tues-Sat: 11-2 & 5-8:30; Sun: 11-2; Closed Monday.

Sala Canal de Isabel II

10. Best Free Art Exhibit Venues in Madrid

Consistently top-notch:
Fundacion Mapfre. Paseo de Recoletas, 23.
Caixa Forum Madrid. Paseo del Prado, 36.
Juan March Foundation. Castelló, 77

Juan March Foundation. Ground floor has exhibit space.

Sunday in Madrid: Picasso, Dalí, Protests, and Squid Sandwiches

Reina Sofia Museum / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

10/09/11 - Calle Santa Isabel, 52

Last Sunday we arrived minutes too late for the Reina Sofia (closing time 2:30) and walked instead through Retiro Park.  The turtles were sunning themselves as usual, packed in a traffic jam on the little gangway by the Crystal Palace pond.  Even though chestnuts were dropping from the sky, it felt too hot for a row on the lake. 

Calder at the Reina Sofia

Today, however, was the kind of fall day I live for—brisk air, bright sun, French bulldogs, giant donuts, and a well-timed visit to one of Madrid’s most famous museums.  The Professor and progeny like to digest art in bite-sized chunks, so we zeroed in on Picasso’s 1937 painting Guernica, a roomful of Dalí, and the Calder sculpture in the courtyard.  

Because the Reina Sofia is free on Sundays, happy throngs stood four-deep in front of Guernica, Picasso’s elegy for the Basque village bombed at the behest of Franco’s Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War.  Picasso was working on a different mural for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair when he read an article about the aerial bombing that decimated the village, killing innocent civilians.  He stopped what he was doing and made the tragedy of war his theme.  Eleven feet tall and twenty-six feet wide, Guernica is big enough to engage us all: tourists, students, locals on a jaunt, teens quoting South Park but regarding everything from the corners of their eyes. 

The nearby room of surrealist paintings by Salvador Dalí, Magritte and other contemporaries, holds psychosexual surprises for those who pay attention.  On this day, Dalí’s composition The Great Masturbator (1929) was a popular backdrop for tourist snapshots. 

Back outside, a crowd of demonstrators against poverty was gathering steam in the square below the Reina Sofia.  Son 2 recognized one of his school-teachers among the drummers, and then a duo onstage began to sing.   

"Spanish Alliance against Poverty"

We walked north toward the Puerta del Sol, through narrow streets and small squares with outdoor cafes.  A woman on a bench—strung-out, troubled—taunted a gay couple with insults, and they moved silently away.  

I’m on a constant French bulldog watch, and soon enough I spotted one. Spanish friends told us that the breed has become popular in Madrid over the past 3 years; I see these cute dogs trotting at the ends of leashes wherever I go.  

French bulldog du jour

As we entered the Plaza de Santa Cruz, the smell of sugared almonds filled the air.  Stalls were offering foods of Spain for tasting and sale: parmesan-like cheese from Murcia, raisin bread, chocolate-frosted donuts that resembled Entenmann’s but were five times the size.  Farther along, at a corner of the bustling Plaza Mayor, we pressed into Casa Rua for glasses of cold beer and hot bocadillos.  These bocadillos are made fresh, with good bread and plenty of salt; as far as we know, the best fried squid sandwiches in town.   

Casa Rua for bocadillos de calamares