The Garden of Earthly Delights
(#22) 📍 Madrid // with a detour to Seville
The overnight coach journey to Madrid was not entirely untraumatic. The driver blasted cheesy pop hits all night in an attempt to keep himself awake. I put my water bottle on the ground before falling asleep, and when I woke up (legs cramping, neck aching) it had disappeared. When the coach deposited us in Madrid in the early hours of the morning, a spaced-out Serbian woman with extremely chapped lips clung to us, asking if there were ‘any hostels’ in Madrid. She was supposed to meet her friend in Bilbao, but had decided against it because it ‘looked a bit cold.’
My friend Rosie and I were on a three-week trip through France, Spain and Portugal. We had booked it only a few weeks beforehand and had not given much thought to anything. We travelled mostly by overnight bus, and often felt unwell.
Madrid was the middle stop of this low-budget interrailing tour. So far, I was amazed at how much I loved all the places we’d visited. Prior to this, the only Spanish city break I’d ever taken was a two-day trip to Seville aged eight. It was the first time I had ever been on a plane, and the experience did not ignite in me a lifelong love of air travel.
In Seville, the hottest city in Europe, it had poured with rain. We rode around the city in a horse-drawn carriage as the wind flapped aggressively at the canopy, and watched the oranges rotting in overflowing gutters. At dinner that evening, my brother and I looked on open-mouthed as a couple made out over the restaurant counter. The following day, my parents capitulated and took us to McDonald’s, where we received a Happy Meal toy which repeatedly played an irritating Spanish song. My poor parents had to listen to it all the way over the border into Portugal; my only memory of this scenic road trip is a stray dog which my dad insisted was rabid.
But, anyway: Madrid. I loved Spain! Now I was old enough to order beer, I could appreciate the tiny plates of tapas that came free on the side in Granada. I’d enjoyed drinking sangria on the beach in Barcelona, and wandering through the lively streets of this city that never seemed to get tired, let alone sleep.
Madrid had a different character. It was grander, more austere, with wide streets that reminded me unexpectedly of Vienna (I found out later that this was because both cities were once ruled by the Habsburgs). Instead of messing around on the beach, we visited palaces and art galleries. One of these was the Prado, where I encountered the work of Hieronymus Bosch for the first time. ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ is still my favourite painting; Rosie and I spent a good fifteen minutes staring at it, and would have discovered more if we’d stayed there longer. Although it was painted in around 1500, it looks like the front cover of an especially bizarre sci-fi novel. Weird little men hug strawberries or climb into giant mussel shells.
My main memory of the local cuisine is churros dipped in warm, melted chocolate. I would go to Madrid again, if only for this.
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