A weekend in Madrid

Oliver had to go to Serbia and Spain on a business trip which meant spending a full weekend plus a Monday and Tuesday in Madrid (due to the May 1 holiday) so Ann went to Madrid for four days. While the weather was a little cool (10-150C) it did not stop us from doing what most people do when they go to Madrid - go to the art galleries, eat and drink. (Bullfighting is not on our agenda unless the Matador is the one who dies).
The main gallery is the Prado but the queue was a mile long (as in all galleries) and it was shut Mon/Tues so we did not get that to it. Instead we went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Gallery next to our hotel which houses the private collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza which was bought by the Spanish Govt in 1993 (for $350m at the time when it was valued at $1billion). It features paintings that go back to 1300 and some of the colours are amazing. The other gallery we went to was the Centro de Atre Reina Sofia which is based around a huge collection of Picasso (Women in Blue and his huge Guernica - which is based on the 1937 bombing of Guernica by the Germans, Dali and Miro. It is amazing to see how Miro went from painting very conservative farm house scenes to the minimal abstracts that he later painted. Likewise, Dali was very conservative in 1925 and by 1927 he had moved to his surrealistic stage. We would love to find out what he was smoking as we need to get some of that. Ann was delighted that she has a painting from her friend Rosita Kruger that is from her conservative era as she thinks that when Rosita goes mad her paintings will be worth so much more!
On the food side we went twice to Botin – the oldest restaurant in the world according to Guinness Book of Records (1725) and one of Heminways favorites - with a neat view into the kitchen. On both occasions we shares the sucking pig and sucking lamb – both unbelievable. And of course we had the compulsory Paella (at La Barraca -the full works seafood version) in a restaurant a friend of Ann’s who’s married to a Spaniard recommended (we couldn’t get in the first day we tried). A signed photo of Sophia Loren in her 30’s was beside our table. One nite we did cocido - pork knuckle and bean stew at La Bola (19th century restaurant) But I think a feature of our eating was the discovery (close to the hotel) of an amazing Tapas bar (which we later found written up in the Guide books) called Los Gatos. It looks like it is a 200 year old junk shop, literally full of junk with a high percentage of religious icons. A very old statue of the Virgin Mary (5 ft high) at the entry to the toilets was as beautiful as you could ever see. Los Gatos was in Jesus St so it felt more like a pilgrimage than a trip to the restaurant. By the second night Ann was given the “reserved” barbers chair (note the hairdryer beside her). By the third night our request for a final glass of wine was a full bottle. All to complement the fantastic dried ham sliced off the bone (a about $18/100gm). Another memorable delight was fried sardines and beer for breakfast in the huge street (like 10 streets) market Ann left on Wed and Oliver went to Pamplona for a day to see a pig operation of a company that wants IFC to fund a pig project in Romania. One of the investors is Ramon Calderon who is Chairman of Real Madrid - so maybe its Euro Cup front seats next time around. The running of the bulls is in Pamplona on July 13th so I (Oliver) put my name down and got into training