November 23rd A walk in Lavapies

Today was bright and find so we decided to take a walk through an area just south of the Plaza Mayor called Lavapies.  Before Lavapies we had another lovely walk through the Retiro, and amazingly we came across the beginning of lilacs coming into bloom, unbelievable!  Lavapies is one of the working class neighborhoods of Madrid; it has many of the African, Chinese, and Indian residents as well as young working people.   It’s a little run down and gritty but it has many interesting buildings and small businesses selling items associated with the various cultures.  Deb wanted to shop a bit so I headed over to Antonio Sanchez a little bar/restaurant that has been in continuous business since 1827 and features lots of bullfight memorabilia for a couple of canas.

A little graffiti added to broken plaster (very witty)

After our walk we spent another couple hours at the Prado, viewing the balance of the Goya artworks we had yet to see.  To see the scope of change and breadth of Goya’s body of work is truly impressive.  It seems to me that he had three pretty distinct periods in his painting.  He did portraits of the aristocracy, the paintings associated with the Madrid uprising against the Napoleonic invasion of the early 1800’s, and finally what are termed his black paintings; like Saturn eating his children.   We came back to the apartment around 7:30 and had a nice quiet meal at home.   Monday we are leaving for a week’s tour of Granada and Seville, so we need to start getting ready for that.