June 23 - Madrid

After cleaning up and breakfast we got a cab to go out to Glorieta of San Antonio de la Florida, which is decorated inside wiht frescoes by Goya celebrating the miracles of St. Anthony. The place is uninteresting on the outside, but the frescoes are amazing! The main scene in the rotunda ceiling portrays the time St. Anthony miraculously traveled to Lisbon from Padova. He demanded to see the corpse, who returned to life and declared the man's innocence. Seamstress girls would drop 13 pins into the holy water in the church (we were wondering why the holy water vessel was so large for a smallish church), then put in her hand - the number of pins that stuck revealed how many suitors the girl would have that year.

Aviva in front of Glorieta of San Antonio de la Florida

And here's the sign

A view of the ceiling

The dome with the miracle of St. Anthony

We got another cab quickly and went back to city central to see the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, a nice art museum. There was a special collection on display of work from Cranach to Monet.

The ticket for the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Ghirlandaio, "Retrato de Giovanna Tornabuoni"	Chrisus, "La Vergen del arbol seco"
Campin, "Retrato de un hombre robusto"	Bramantino, "Cristo resucitado"
Cranach, "Charity" (this was from the special show)

We walked out near Puerta del Sol to have lunch at La Trucha (the trout) - the food was okay but nothing special to write about so I won't.

We walked back to city central. Did I say it was hot? The forecast was for almost a hundred today. We just missed the decorative art museum, so we tried to catch a cab but failed and so we walked over to the subway and took that up to the Sol stop so we could walk over to the Calcografica Nacional, the national print gallery.

You won't see decoration like this in the States! Looks like a fun place to drink to me!
The subway ticket to Sol

They had a nice show up of John Martin's work; they also sell prints they have repulled from original plates - we bought one. The person at the shop talked with us for a while about art, politics, travel and prehistoric cave painting.

One of the prints by John Martin, "Satan levantando a los angeles caidos"

Then, we took the subway back up to the Santo Domingo stop, across the street from our hotel.

We tried to eat in the hotel but there was some kind of event (lots of people in suits and formal dresses), so we went looking for a restaurant suggested by the hotel. They gave us a map and (bad) directions - after failing to find the place we went instead to Casa Jacinto Restaurante, Calle Reloj 20, 91 542 67 25, which was quite good - we'd go back again. I had the Castille soup, a bread and Spanish ham soup, the veal ragout, a hearty veal stew, and a leche frita desert - fried milk, very interesting.

The card for Casa Jacinto Restaurante