Luckily our time in Madrid coincided with a Sunday as Norah was really looking forward to the El Rastro flea market in the La Latina neighborhood. El Rastro is the largest and most popular open air flea market in Madrid, drawing over 100,000 people to browse the 700 stalls that pop up every Sunday. “El Rastro” means “the trail”, referring to the trails of blood on the streets when this neighborhood was home to the first slaughterhouse in 1497 and the tanneries that soon followed (at that time it was on the outskirts of town). This area was the place to get fresh meat and leather goods and in the 1730s more trades moved in. A secondhand market took root when people started selling used clothes in stalls and the market is still going strong today.

While El Rastro’s tradition is secondhand treasures, many of the stalls today have new items - some of it the type of cheap goods you find at flea markets and a lot of the stalls had similar items. But poking around we were able to find some more unique items. I bought a small watercolor print from a local artist and Norah liked searching through the piles of used clothes for an old Adidas hoodie. Some of the side streets had more antique and vintage goods that we liked checking out and we also browsed in some of the stores in the neighborhood. We arrived at the market close to when it opened and it wasn’t too busy, but by the time a few hours had passed it was very crowded and getting harder to walk around. The Rick Steves guidebook, as well as other sources online, mentioned pickpockets are common here - but fortunately we didn’t have any issues with this.

La Latina is a great neighborhood for tapas and after we got our fill of the flea market we found a spot for lunch at Taberna 4 Tapas. I loved the padrón peppers we had the night before and we ordered a plate of those, plus a charcuterie plate. After our tasty lunch we walked twenty minutes to the Prado Museum for our timed tickets. The Prado is one of the premier art museums in Europe, housing a collection of European art dating from the 12th century to the 18th century (the collection terminates in 1881, the year of Picasso’s birth). The museum has the best collection of Spanish art and features the holy trinity of Spanish painters: El Greco, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco Goya.

The building was designed in 1785 to house the Natural History Cabinet, but was eventually used as a new Royal Museum showcasing the Spanish Crown’s art that opened to the public in 1819. Several renovations were done in the 18th and 19th centuries to accommodate the growing collection and popularity of the museum. The collection currently comprises around 8,200 drawings, 7,600 paintings, 4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures, with about 1,300 works on display. Information on the official website gives a description of the collection and its unique nature:

“Welcome to the Museo del Prado, an institution dating back 200 years and one whose origins and unique nature are largely due to the collecting tastes of Spain’s 16th- and 17th-century monarchs. Collecting at that period differed from the present day. Rather than aiming at comprehensiveness, collectors aimed to assemble as many works as possible by their favorite artists. This explains why the Prado has been described as a museum of painters not of paintings, given that its artists are represented in a superlative manner with, for example, the largest holdings of Bosch, Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Velázquez and Goya, some numbering more than 100 works. This type of instinctive collecting also resulted in gaps and explains why some periods are less well represented than others, either because they were not of interest, for example the Italian Primitives, or for historical reasons, as with 17th-century Dutch painting.

We rented audioguides and used them along with the Rick Steves self guided tour to make our way through the collection and hit the highlights. Some of the must sees included Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (I was excited to see this one as I had previously looked at it online when I was reading a book that referenced it, so it was pretty cool to see it in person), Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Peter Paul Rubens’s The Three Graces, and seeing the progression of Goya from his work as a court painter to his dark paintings. The works in his dark period were actually murals he painted of his nightmares on the walls of his house that were transferred onto canvas. Saturn is one of the most striking pieces from his dark period and definitely a contrast to his earlier works. No photos were allowed in the Prado, so we made sure to pick up some postcards from the gift shop to remember our favorite paintings.

Although I preferred the art at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, I compared the experience of the Prado to the experience of the Louvre in Paris: a premier museum with a classic collection that is a must see, not just for the art, but for the experience of the place. The Prado is definitely a Museum with a capital M and I’m happy we got to experience it.

We had no set plans for dinner and Norah wanted to check out a few shops on Gran Via, so we took off that direction. We happened to pass by the Plus Ultra building around 6 pm when the automatons of the Goyesque Carillon stepped out on the balcony (they come out four times a day accompanied by the music of the eighteen bells at the clock sides). Spanish cartoonist Antonio Mingote was asked to create these automatons and was inspired by Francisco de Goya (obviously not from his dark period, lol, that would be a very different display!). The characters represent traditional characters from the Goya area: the bullfighter Pedro Romano, a Madrid Maja (local woman), King Carlos III, the Duchess of Alba, and Francisco de Goya himself. The building itself was built in 1913 by the Marquis of Amboage to be used for rent and was acquired by the Plus Ultra insurance company in 1941. On our walk we saw another historic building with insurance roots - the Four Seasons Hotel. It was originally completed in 1891 as the headquarters of La Equitativa insurance company, later was the headquarters of Banesto for nearly 85 years, and was eventually renovated to the current hotel.

We walked around and eventually ate in an area on the border of Sol-Gran Via and Barrio de las Letras. This is a cute neighborhood to walk around - there are lots of small cobblestone streets with cafes and taverns and lively crowds. We picked a place at random and had tapas - we finally got to try some croquettes - then made the short walk to our hotel. It was a good day and nice that we had an earlier night because we had to be up early the next morning to catch our train to Toledo.