Today we went to El Rastro, Madrid's famous and huge mercadillo that always attracts many tourists. My family and I took the metro, which was a fun adventure, and once we arrived, it was easy to spot El Rastro. In front of where the long line of booths began was a street band jamming out. One of my favorite things about cities are these spontaneous joys like a group of people making beautiful music in the midst of grimy streets and delicious café aromas. After watching the band a bit and giving them a few euros, we went into El Rastro. Olivia bought a beautiful, flowing blouse that looked like stained glass and a flower ring. We each got a great leather jacket and a nice backpack. I got a Don Quijote t-shirt and Mama bought a cute decorative mug to hold pencils and pens, plus a poster of flamenco dancer. The crafter of the mug was very kind, and he's been selling his crafts at El Rastro for forty years! During our time at the large mercadillo, we saw another street band, larger than the first and just as talented.
After eating lunch, we walked many blocks to the Museo de la Reina Sofia. As we strolled toward the art museum, we came upon art in the city streets: a sculpture in honor of four lawyers and a paralegal who were assassinated in Madrid on January 24, 1977 by people in a far-right political group.
The museum had an astonishing glass elevator that we were able go into to take us to the third floor. We were only allowed to go into the first and third floors. The first floor had many interesting pieces but I enjoyed the third floor the most. The third floor focused on the history of Spain--of it's time under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Before entering any room filled with paintings, drawings, poems, and sculptures was an explanation of the political and social situation of the time period in which those artworks were created. Artists conveyed their grief at their country's state, persecuted and even exiled to Russia, Argentina, France, and other places far from their homeland. One Spanish artist painted a Russian town in somber colors, missing the country he grew up in. Some borrowed from Picasso's works, though he was living in Paris, having promised to never return to Spain until Franco's rule was over. In one room there were at least a dozen paintings by Salvador Dalí. My favorite was "The Invisible Man," showing a cityscape that almost completely concealed a man stretched across the painting vertically. It was fascinating to try to discover every part of the man, and I didn't even realize until Mama told me later that his hand was made up of a desperate family clinging to each other in the bottom right of the frame.
After enjoying the art museum, we went to see a different kind of art: a vertical garden over a hundred feet tall. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, because it was spectacular. Olivia fell in love with it, due to her passion for plants.
I fell in love later when, after we had walked most of the way back to our apartment, we stopped to buy mini churros. These bite-sized churros were covered in sugar and drenched in warm, melted chocolate. God, my mouth is watering just writing about them!
After eating leftovers for dinner, we all talked and read, then went to sleep.
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