Category Archives: Madrid

11th July 2023: Museum of Dreamers in Madrid (Spain)

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After I had so much fun in the Balloon Museum, I decided that I also wanted to see the Museum of Dreamers, which is something similar. Furthermore, it Madrid exhibit will close down at the end of July, too.

After I finished French school in Madrid, I headed headed off to the Japanese fusion restaurant Nomo Braganza, part of the Nomo Group. Nomo was established in 2007 under the culinary direction of Japanese chef Naoyuki Haginoya. I have to say that I don’t really trust the Spanish-Japanese fusion too much, but in this case, it really panned out. I met my sibling for a late lunch, because I was curious about the chef’s menu, what in Japanese would be called omakase [お任せ], which means leaving the choice of food to the chef. The menu was was a whooping 12 small-sized courses for 50€ – drinks not included, and considering it was 39 ºC outside, we ended up ordering a few rounds of water.

The menu, which changes periodically, comprised in July 2023:

  • Age Edamame Truffle – fermented edamame beans fried with white truffle scent. I personally prefer my edamame boiled, but the truffle scent was a nice touch.
  • Sukiyaki Croquette – oxtail croquette breaded with panko breadcrumbs. This was surprisingly good – and the actual flavour was strong.
  • Maguro Taco – mini taco of tuna tartar with wasabi and shiso (the “taco” was weirdly… not taco-shaped, more like cracker-shaped). The tuna was really good, albeit the base was a bit strange.
  • Gyu Niku Gyoza – aged beef dumplings with caramelised onion and yuzu, two of them per person. It was all right.
  • Ebi Chili – spicy king prawns and fried egg on kataifi noodles, mixed at the table. When we are talking spicy, it means… really spicy. The prawn bits were sizeable, but this was really something I would not miss should it disappear from the menu.
  • Toro Tartar No Temaki – tuna tartar prepared at the table: raw tuna belly mixed with Japanese onion, turnip, egg yolk, chilli pepper and wasabi on a bed of nori and rice so you can roll it yourself (spoiler: you really can’t). This was probably one of my favourite items – but I guess that after all I am a raw tuna fan.
  • Brie Nigiri – flamed Brie cheese nigiri with honey and walnuts. This was probably the weakest sushi bite, but it was still good.
  • Butter Fish Nigiri – butterfish nigiri with kimchi and chilli peppers. Butterfish is only good raw anyway.
  • Aburi Salmon Nigiri – flamed Norwegian salmon nigiri, with Japanese mayonnaise, salmon roe and onion. I still prefer raw salmon, but the flame was light so it was barely perceptible.
  • Maguro Tataki No Nigiri Trufa Nose – tuna tataki nigiri with soy and black truffle sauce. This was also really good.
  • Gyu Niku No Tataki – aged beef tataki with caramelised mushrooms and miso sauce. The combination of meat and the mushroom was strange, but when taken separately it was all good.
  • Caramel dorayaki – two halves of a dorayaki filled with salty caramel paste. Unexpected, because the menu listed something else, but it is not as if it was bad at all!

Chef's choice menu at Nomo Madrid

My sibling ordered some green tea out of the menu, and in the end, the drinks did not add as much to the price as I expected. Also, I have to give a shout-out to the pickled ginger we got. Really good.

After having lunch, we took a train towards the Museum of Dreamers, which is stands in Espacio Ibercaja Delicias, a place that seems to always look somewhat abandoned, even when it is stupidly hot and sunny. The exhibit was designed by sisters Elena and Giulia Sella, founders of Postology, an agency specialised in “phygigal” experiences. This concept merges the words “physical” and “digital”, allowing for a number of immersive and surreal experiences. The Museum of Dreamers is one of those things that you have to see with an open mind to have some fun. It comprises sixteen interactive installations which are basically photo-ops – after all, the word instagrammable has been officially accepted on dictionaries. I guess it is a new niche that can be exploited, and to be honest, I can get behind that, because some of these activities are hilarious.

Entry is timed, but they do not hold a very strict waiting policy – at least not on a Tuesday at 17:00 and 39 ºC. There were no timed exhibits or performances either. The first installation is a dark room with a starry sky of sorts, designed maybe to isolate the rest of the exhibition from the outside, maybe as a metaphor (100 Dreamers). Then you get to a semi open space that opens to the smaller installations that allow for fun pictures. All through the space there are motivational sentences and “rules” for safety in the different installation.

There is some kind of cosmic tube with mirror that was dizzying to walk into (Free your power), a tunnel made of hearts with an encouraging message at the end (Do what you love), an upside down room (Change perspective), an downside down bedroom with a giant plush and fun bed covers (Never stop dreaming), one full of disco lamps (Sparkle more), and a neon staircase flanked by colourful palm trees (Step by Step).

Museum of Dreamers exhibits

Afterwards, there is a ball pit – you know, it’s not like I had ever stepped into one before Friday, and now that’s twice in one week – with a “relaxing island” in the middle (Enjoy Today). In front of that, a tunnel made of fake pink flowers with a long table, set for a tea party (Believe in Magic). That managed to make you think of Alice in Wonderland imprint on your brain. Thus, you are in the right mindset for the following room, full of giant mushrooms and flowers that open up at will – theirs, for sure, not the visitors – whole giant butterflies hang around with their wings made out of lights (Wonder).

Museum of Dreamers exhibits

The final part of the exhibit consists on a second row of booths – a colour wheel, a door that opens to a fantasy scenery, a VR experience (Choose your Way), a stage (The stage is yours), some pink telephones (Your Dreams are Calling you), bright lights commanding you to DREAM (Be Bright)… There were two more rooms, one with a sky background and swings (Sky is not the limit), and the other with punching bags reading FEAR, STRESS, ANXIETY and so on (Never Give Up). I can’t punch, but I can strangle, so I choked the hell out of these last two.

Museum of Dreamers exhibits

That was the end of the escapade. It was a fun half-day out.

7th July 2023: Balloon Museum “Pop Air” in Madrid (Spain)

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Part of this summer’s plans involved a three-week French course-and-stay in Montpellier, but I ended up changing my mind – too many hidden costs on top of the already-steep price, and a generalised bad feeling that I could not really define. I decided to take a course in Madrid and use up the evenings to do some exploring in town.

After class, I booked a table at the Chueca shop of the Japanese restaurant chain Sibuya Sushi Bar, which claims to offer a new concept of sushi. Most of what they offer felt pretty normal to me, except some random baos and the desserts. I browsed the website before booking, so when I arrived I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. Somehow, the waiter did not expect that and was thrown off track. I ordered some ebi furai and a sashimi mix – I have to admit that the size of the sashimi portion did surprise me a little, as I did not expect such a generous serving. Luckily, I had hold on ordering dessert, because the two dishes were more than enough.

Lunch at Sibuya Madrid

There were two temporary exhibits I wanted to check out, and I chose the one that closed down earlier. I checked as I had lunch, and there were tickets available online. I decided to take the underground and buy the tickets in person instead of stressing about making it on time for a particular timeslot. I reached the Balloon Museum on time for the 15:45 entry. The exhibition Pop Air runs from March to July 2023 in the Escenario Puerta del Ángel in Madrid’s Casa de Campo.

Still considered a noon slot, the exhibition was not too crowded at the time I entered, I even had a couple of rooms for myself before I reached a point in which you had to be admitted because the performance was timed. The Ballon Museum‘s Pop Air exhibit is a collection of art pieces that use air and light as their main vehicle.

Artworks:

  • The Goof by Filthy Luker (2021). They are a bunch of “friendly monsters” that observer the world feeding off surprise and happiness. They look… just adorable, as if they were made of giant inflated latex gloves in different colours with huge eyes.
  • Aria, The Breath Immersive Experience by Pepper’s Ghost (2022). A room full of mirrors and digitally-created colourful spheres that spreads to infinite and beyond.
  • Airship Orchestra by Eness (2020). More adorable creatures made out of air, some resembling Japanese peaches, other bunnies, or cacti.

    • Ballon Museum exhibits. The Goof, Aria, Airship orchestra

  • Hypercosmo by Hyperstudio (2021), which is basically a huge ball pit with a show of music and lights.
  • A Quiet Storm by Quiet Ensemble (2022). A dark room where cannons shoot bubbles.
  • Silenus by Max Streicher (2002). A giant, breathing… person… sleeping. It’s a bit creepy, to be honest.
  • Knot by Cyril Lancelin (2017). It is an inflatable… knot, literally a 3D knot made out of a tube.

    • Balloon Museum exhibits: Hypercosmo, A quiet storm, Silenis, Knot

  • Polyheadra by Karina Smigla-Bobinski (2022). It is a room full of balloons with small magnets which you can stick to the wall and the ceiling, and even to each other.
  • Never Ending Story by Motorefisico (2021). Music: Gentle Music by Plume (Netlabel). A lot of decorative balls in a small room full of mirrors and light.
  • Tholos by Plastique Fantastique (2022). A giant black ball surrounded by a plastic structure that imitates the archaeological tholos tombs.
  • Canopy by Pneuhaus & Bike Powered Events (2019). Four palm-tree-like structures that open up and glow if you bike them into life.

    • Balloon Museum Exhibits. Polyheadra, Never ending story, Tholos, Canopy

  • Cloud Swing by Lindsay Glatz with Curious Form (2019). Cute swings held by colourful “clouds” of light.
  • The GINJOS by Rub Kandy (2022). They’re blobs of air with eyes. When I saw them my first impression was “they’re squishy and unstable. I have found my people”. I also found the song hilarious, especially the reference that “GINJOS are not Barbapapa”.
  • Into the Rainbow by Ultravioletto. A VR experience out of which one cannot really take pictures. A white sphere travels through the colours of the rainbow and its symbols – orange candy, yellow rubber duckies, green trees, blue whales, purple… cows(?) and amethyst crystals
  • A number of cute photo booths for picture opportunities, without credit to any particular artist.
  • Parcobaleno by Stefano Rossetti (2020), is a large “inflatable park” for “all the family” (i.e. for kids), which was empty as it was way too hot for any playing.

Ballon Museum exhibits. The swings, the Ginjos, Parcobaleno

All in all, it was a really silly but fun experience. I headed back home afterwards, because even if exploring Casa de Campo is on my list, it was way too hot and I did not have any cold drinks on me. I made an amazing underground-train connection though, which was great because the Casa de Campo stop is pretty far away by public transport – and rather horrible to drive to.

24th June 2023: Abierto por Restauración. La Puerta de Alcalá (Madrid, Spain)

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There is a Spanish adage that calls King Carlos III (1716 – 1788) “the best mayor Madrid ever had”. The truth is that when Fernando VI died, his brother, King of Naples and Sicily ascended the Spanish throne. He started a number of reforms in the Spanish capital that today conform the so-called “Way of the Light” – Unesco Heritage Site Paisaje de la Luz since 2021.

Madrid had at the time a surrounding wall for administrative reasons, in order to control trade. The different gates were named according to the main city they lead to. Carlos III decided to remodel one of the gates, the one that lead north-west – first to Alcalá de Henares and then to the rest of Europe. To carry out the task he called for a contest, which was “coincidentally” won by the Court’s architect Francesco Sabatini. It took ten years (from 1769 to 1779) to be completed, in typical Neoclassical style.

Today, this gate is still known as Puerta de Alcalá, and it stands in the central district of Salamanca in Madrid. The wall, however, long gone so the structure remains as a triumph arch more than a gate, in the middle of a roundabout in the Square Plaza de la Independencia.

The gate measures almost 24 metres high, 43 metres wide and 12 metres deep. It was built in solid stone with five arches, and decorated with sculptures depicting the cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance) and allegories of war victories.

Puerta de Alcalá under the protective cover

Restoration studies started in 2022, and the works began in 2023. In March 2023, it was announced that the gate would be “open for restoration” Abierto por Restauración, and that about 6,500 tickets would be offered for guided visits to the monument throughout summer. I had a free morning when the tickets went live and I managed to secure one, despite them being “sold out” in minutes. The Abierto for Restauración project, financed by the Madrid Town Hall, aims to raise awareness of the heritage that Madrid holds.

Though I had originally planned for a day out, I was not feeling too well . Nevertheless, I really did not want to give up the chance and I decided to just head over, attend the visit. and just take the train back home, making it a half-day out.

The gate is covered with a huge billboard showing a hyper-realistic photograph, which also hides part of the scaffolding and protective messes that cover the structure. The restoration aims to repair the mistakes of previous attempts at conservation, counteract the effects of pollution and weather, and secure the sculptures at the top of the gate.

We were supposed to meet at 10:45 at the gate of the park on one side of the square, for the 11:00 visit. The guide arrived at 11:00 sharp and started “taking attendance” – since the gate is technically a “construction site” you are insured, and you have to wear a security helmet and all. Then she took us to the base of the gate and told us the history of the construction. The previous group started coming down at 11:00 and we climbed at 11:15. By noon, we were down.

We climbed the inner scaffolding to the top of the gate, where we got to see the work first-hand. Not that there was much to see, because the works cover most everything. There are giant staples that have been taken off the sculptures in order to repair the damage and secure their placement.

Scaffolding supporting the Puerta de Alcalá

The upper platform allowed for snooping along the sculptures there and the views around the gate, along with a bit of the work being done – huge metal supports for the sculptures, filling up cracks, insulation…

Sculptures at the top of Puerta de Alcalá

Views from the top of Puerta de Alcalá

Though the experience was short, and I did not see as much as I hoped, I was lucky to grab a ticket – 6,500 of them, with 13,000 in the waiting list – but it looks like the reforms won’t be over for a while, so it might still be open next summer. It might be an interesting experience to try again and compare the progress.

31st May 2023: Birthday in Madrid (Spain)

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I was lucky enough to be able to combine my 2022 birthday with a holiday that happens around the end of May / beginning of June, so I took off to Tenerife. I could not do that this year, but the stars aligned for a half-day in Madrid – actually, what aligned was a lot of website-hopping, to be honest. It all started when we were booking tickets for the visit to the Royal Palace of La Granja. At that time, I discovered that the collection of Stradivarius instruments in the Madrid Royal Palace are brought out so they can be played every now and then. I had to work on the dates of all the upcoming 2023 concerts where they were used, but I managed to secure tickets for a side gig, which also gave access to a usually closed-off area of the Palace anyway.

Conversely, I have been obsessed with a London experience in which you get to have afternoon tea on a 60’s double-decker bus – but unfortunately, it does not take reservations for one. I was browsing the Internet , looking at similar experiences, and I stumbled upn the fact that the Mandarin Oriental Ritz runs afternoon tea in Madrid. They actually claim that their tea is the same as the London Hyde Park Ritz. I signed up for the Fan of M.O program – not that I’m ever going to be able to afford a stay there, but oh well – before making the reservation, and the system asked if there was a special occasion going on. I ticked “birthday”.

Plans thus built, we arrived in Madrid for the 16:00 booking of afternoon tea at the Palm Court restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid hotel.

The Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid opened in 1910, after King Alfonso XIII decided that Madrid needed a luxury hotel to host European nobility. The king himself became an investor, wanting the city to have lodgings comparable to Paris or London. The building was commissioned to French architect Charles Frédéric Mewes and the construction was directed by Luis de Landecho y Lorenzo Gallego. Surrounded by a metalwork wall, it has 153 rooms and suites, and a wide variety of dining options with different levels of formality.

Through the 20th century, the original Ritz became a piece of history. Its rooms and bars hosted a wide range of personalities – WWI spy Mata Hari, artist Salvador Dalí, writer Ernest Hemingway, scientist Alexander Fleming, and more recent celebrities such as Ava Gardner, Michelle Pfeiffer or Madonna. In 2015, the hotel was acquired by Mandarin Oriental, and in 2018 renovation was tackled. The Covid pandemic delayed its reopening until 2021. Part of the restoration focused on the inner court, with an iron-and-glass ceiling. This is the area where the restaurant Palm Court is located.

When we arrived, they confused my reservation with someone else’s with the same first name – I had to correct the lady, it was a reservation for three not for two. Then they asked if we were celebrating something, to which I replied that it was my birthday – again. As we sat down, the pianist was playing the OST of Aquaman. Cognitive dissonance? Check.

A nice gentleman brought out the tea menu – while the food is fixed, you can choose from a wide variety of tea. I had of course studied the options beforehand, and ordered sencha meicha, because it is one of my favourite teas, even if it is Japanese. I mean, I can get Earl Grey more easily – and affordably.

The booking confusion continued when we got our food – once more they brought out a three-tier tray for two, and when they brought out the third one, they had mistakenly brought out one of the dietary-restriction trays – easy to spot because the sandwiches had different colours. When the correct tray was brought out, the order of the different tiers was incorrect.

The tea itself was delicious. The food included has been designed to Quique Dacosta, mixing the “best afternoon tea tradition” with Spanish confectioneries. The classic mini sandwiches included a cucumber and cheese cream, Spanish ham, potato omelette, seafood and mayonnaise, and a salmon cracker, shaped as a rose. The sweets included chocolate mousses, lilac sponges and citrus pastries.

Afterwards came the scones, which were a bit too small and I was slightly disappointed that the promised clotted cream was merely butter. But the scones – two types of them – were warm and well done. Afterwards, as we were finished, the pianist played the notes to the traditional happy birthday song and I was brought a small mousse with “congrats” written on the plate – though they served it to someone else in the party!

Afternoon Tea: sandwiches, pastries, scones and the actual tea

Felicidades dessert

I loved the tea party. However, even if all the staff was extremely nice, it gave me the feeling that they were overwhelmed and nervous – almost improvising – as they made a few mistakes. Afterwards, we walked to the Royal Palace Palacio Real de Madrid. Even if it was an hour to the recital, we were allowed into the courtyard, and not much later into the royal chapel Real Capilla. The recital was called Afectos Amantes (Loving affections), and it mostly comprised music by José de Torres. Torres was the main composer of religious music for the Spanish 17th-century court, though the majority of his music was lost when the original Madrid alcazar burnt down – however, a few pieces were preserved in El Escorial, Salamanca, and Guatemala. There were also a couple of pieces by Händel.

Royal Palace and Chapel

The music was performed by Al Ayre Español, a classically-trained ensemble that focuses on Spanish Baroque Music. Its members are Eduardo López Banzo, (harpsichord, and director); Jacobo Díaz Giráldez (oboe); Alexis Aguado (violin); Kepa Arteche (violin); Aldo Mata (cello); Xisco Aguiló (double bass); Juan Carlos de Mulder (archilaúd and guitar); and finally Maite Beaumont (mezzo-soprano singer).

The program included:

  1. Pasacalles I & II (Passacaglia), Anonymous
  2. Divino Hijo de Adán (Divine Son of Adam), José de Torres
  3. Sonata Op.5 No.4 in G Major, Georg Friedrich Händel
  4. ¡Oh, quien pudiera alcanzar! (Whomever could reach), José de Torres
  5. Sonata Op.5 No.5 in G Minor, Georg Friedrich Händel
  6. Afectos amantes (Loving affections), José de Torres
  7. Grave (Low), José de Torres

Al Ayre Español bowing to the audience after the recital

The recital lasted a bit over an hour and a half. It was something really interesting to do once in your lifetime, and surprisingly not pricey at all. Even if Baroque music is not usually my thing, the event felt very appropriate in the chapel. We did not feel like any more food, so we just headed home, braving the thunderstom on the highway.

27th May 2023: Mammoths and Knights in Madrid (Spain)

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I headed off to Madrid to watch the Knights of the Zodiac film, the Hollywood remake of the 80s anime Saint Seiya – I’m not making any excuses (I mean, I still went to the Symphonic Adventure after it got cancelled trice), I just wanted to see it, even if I did not have much faith in it. I wanted to combine it with another activity, and I thought I lucked out when I found that Caixa Forum Madrid was running an exhibition on mammoths – Mamut, el Gigante de la Edad del Hielo (Mammoth, the Ice-Age Giant). I allocated about an hour and a half for the exhibition, which hosted an almost-complete fossilised skeleton and a hyperrealist sculpture “among other pieces”. Truth be told, there was not much else to see.

The exhibit has some molars from different species, some fur, a tusk and a few pieces of prehistoric art. There was also an evolutionary timeline and little models comparing the sizes of different mammoth species to the average human size. The pièce de résistance is indeed the complete mammoth skeleton that was the literal centre of the exhibit – hugely-tusked specimen of wholly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). It was a truly magnificent piece, but I was a little disappointed by how few pieces were actually on display. It’s not like there is not any material around – there used to be a Mammoth Museum in Barcelona that had actual tusks for sale. I had also seen another one in Muséum des sciences naturelles de Belgique in Belgium a couple of months back, which diminished the awe factor a little.

Mammoth - The Ice Age Giant exhibit featuring the giant skeleton with huge curved tusks, the smaller sculpture, a lone tusk, some hair and a piece of Paleolithic art engraved on the ivory of a tusk.

I was done in a bit over 30 minutes, so I had time to walk to the cinema – there was another exhibition in the same floor, but I had already seen it in Barcelona, and the Museum shop did not have anything interesting. I had planned to walk to the cinema, as public transit was only slightly shorter. The weather was not so nice, and there was a small storm. I did duck into a couple of shops but to be honest I ended up at the cinema 40 minutes before the session started while it poured outside. I found myself a seat to wait – I had got my ticket online the day the release was announced. This was my first time in a cinema since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018, and it was a weird feeling, being so close to strangers again. It was also extremely cold, and the previews were felt eternal.

The reason I sometimes choose Yelmo Cines Ideal is that some of their films are shown in their original language, and I tend to enjoy subs more than the dubbed versions. The Knights of the Zodiac film was… a choice, I guess. It is based on the newest remake – which I have not seen because I’m not a streaming-service person – and it changed a lot of the lore. Except for the main character (Seiya in the original material), all the names had been changed, but I noticed that the subs stuck to the original ones.

Knights of The Zodiac movie poster

It was not a bad film, all things considered. Entertaining, wannabe Marvel-like, tapping a little into mixing the cosmic magic and newer technology that was unimaginable in the 80s when the manga was made. It lacked on the music department though – considering how powerful the anime music is, that was disappointing, though here and there there are a few chords of the original song Pegasus Fantasy. That was cool.

But then again, I was half-expecting a disaster, so anything was an improvement, and the film made itself watchable. Sean Bean’s character died, but considering that in the original material his character is already dead at the end, I guess it could be considered some kind of record…

15th April 2023: Madrid for Sweet Space Museum (Spain)

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My friend D****e and I met for a fast day packed with activities. We reached Madrid at 10:40 and had tickets to visit an interactive museum called Sweet Space. It markets itself as a “colourful experience which mixes sweets and modern art”. I just thought it would be a fun thing to do with a friend that would give into quirky pictures and a couple of hours of giggles. It actually fulfilled both. If you take the place seriously, it’s plainly not worth the visit – modern art in general is questionable at best, and this could be seen like a bit on the childish side – and regular tickets are 18 €. The place’s best-selling point is “get cool pics for your social media”, and we had decided to just be silly about it and enjoy ourselves.

The “museum”, located in the ABC Serrano shopping centre, gives the vibes of an oversized (maybe overpriced) playground, and just like Monasterio de Piedra, the number of people you encounter weighs a hugely in your experience. Although we had an 11:30 ticket, we were lucky enough to be admitted at 11:15 with a family that lost us on the third room, so we had quite a lot of time on our own, until the group that came afterwards caught up. We did take a lot of pictures, to be honest, and missed no opportunity to fool around – which was the mindset we had.

Since the museum’s flagship idea is mixing sweets and modern art, when you enter some of the rooms you are given a treat – a gummy or a piece of chocolate or a tiny bit of ice-cream. You cannot backtrack, so the route gets a bit weird at points – you go up to the second floor on stairs, but down using a slide… The museum has nine different rooms and a few of them are refurbished over time. Unfortunately, I forgot to track down the artists because it was stupidly fun – I mean, at one point I got to ride a carousel-style flamingo. Back in the day in the day, I would have never dared do such a thing, but I guess I’ve changed a little in the last ten years.

  • Room 1: Palm trees with marshmallow trunks (Antonyo Marest). This was a fun way to start the whole thing and set the mood. It is literally a room with tree trunks that look like colourful marshmallows, with leaves on top.
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  • Room 2 (corridor): Flowers in the dark – a dark room with bright plastic flowers. It was pretty, but probably the less surprising room.
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  • Room 3: Mirrors and hanging pink balloons, inspired by Tokyo’s TeamLab. It was hard to take a good picture that did not catch anyone’s reflection!
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  • Room 4 (corridor): Mirrors and neon graffiti (Álvaro Linares) with Star Wars inspired references. This was one of the coolest areas (though I’m not sure how… legal that Darth Vader painting would be). One of the sides had a throne-like chair you could sit on and feel like an evil mastermind.

Collage. Sweet Space museum. Palm trees whose trunks resemble marshmellows, neon-coloured flowers and grafitti, pink balloon-like lamps hanging in a mirror-wall room

  • Room 5: Ice-cream parlour “Töto Ice Cream”, including little kart and refrigerator you can step into, giving off a strong 1950’s aura. A lot of pink, I’d say – I did not dare walk into the fridge (for some reason it gave me the creeps), but D****e did; I “drove” the little kart instead. We took silly pictures there with the installed iPad camera, just for the hell of it.
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  • Room 6: Fairytale landscape (Christian Escribá and Patricia Schmidt), a-la Hansel and Gretel or Alice in Wonderland (though it was officially inspired by Wizard of Oz), with a swing and flamingo that you can ride. When I saw that one online, I really, really hoped that it was not only one of those things that only influencers get to do. I got to ride the flamingo. I don’t know why it drew me so much, maybe it was the pure surrealism of it all, but it made me giddy. The rest of the room was fun too – oversized mushrooms, teddy-bears, and colourful decoration.
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  • Room 7 (upstairs): Sky with clouds (Agatha Ruiz de la Prada) painted and carved into sliding doors, a starry rocket (Ivanna Gautier), a bouncing area, a mural where you could take a 3D video for TikTok, and a “planetarium”, with tiny lamp-robots and tons of stars made from light dots. I liked this last one a lot, too. In order to leave the floor and go back to the lower floor, you have to go down a spiral slide, which I was not a fan of – it was difficult to get into it without putting weight on my bad wrist. However, I managed to go down unscathed.
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  • Room 8 (Misterpiro): It held a ball pit with a “staircase to heaven” (or to nowhere). We did not go into the pit, but we climbed the stairs for pictures too.

Collage - fantasy worlds from Sweet Space museum. Overgrown mushrooms, a flamingo, a cloud, a universe made out of green neon dots with a little robot peering out, a cartoonish rocket in front of a starry background, a colourful ballpit full of white balls.

Finally, we reached the shop, where we purchased the pictures we had taken at the ice parlour (8 € for two magnets with four photographs, the downloadable version, and a gif). We were supposed to get a sweet in each room, and we ended up with three or four gummies, a chocolate, and a tiny scoop of ice cream. My favourite was the skull-shaped sweet&sour gummy we got upstairs, but they did not have it at the shop (though it is advertised online). The whole experience was a bit on the expensive side, but I had a discount that helped knock 10 € off the official price. The recommended time I had seen recommended for the museum was an hour and a half, but even if we took a long time, we were done in about an hour.

I had reserved lunch at 14:30 based on the time I expected us to be in the museum (and the availability of the restaurant), so we had some time to kill. We walked by the open-air museum of modern sculpture Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de La Castellana, but it did not catch our fancy. Too much modern art in one day?

The place we would invest most of that extra time was the museum of Natural History Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales to see some dinosaurs and the gabinete de curiosidades, the 18th and 19th century collection of taxidermy specimens. I’d been there before, and it mostly has replicas (and holy molly, prices have gone up). This time there was an exhibit on the Moon landing, and the gardens had been open. The taxidermy collection is not as good as other museums, but at least it got us out of the heat.

Collage. Dinosaur fossil casts and reconstructions, both carnivores and long-neck herbivores. A flying reptile with some mammooth fossils in the background. Rocks. The old collection dating from the 19th century - a number of glass cases with people looking at them and a painting of king Carlos III overlooking the place.

We left the museum and headed for lunch at one of the franchised establishments of New York Burger, which markets itself as a “gourmet burger” place. It was all right, and the servings were huge. After lunch, we hung around the area known as Nuevos Ministerios, a complex originally designed by Secundino Zuazo Ugalde around 1930. We hung out under the eastern archway for a while.

The archway in Nuevos Ministerios, built in reddish brick and white plaster

Afterwards, we took the train to Alcalá de Henares. We stopped at one of the shopping centres just outside town, Quadernillos, where the comic event Krunch! 2023 was taking place. We did not stay for long as most stands sold bootleg and plagiarised stuff, and I did not find any legit shop, but we had ice cream and D****e did take the chance to do some shopping in the mall before we headed home for the evening.

5th April 2023: The ghost station of Chamberí (Madrid, Spain)

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Perusing the web for something – I can’t even remember what – I came across one of those things that I had discovered a long time ago, then forgotten because life is hectic and so (read: Covid happened). In Madrid, there an underground ghost station, one that has not changed since the 1960s. Well, sort of – it was closed, then restored, and finally turned into a museum. Anyway, somehow accidentally, I ended up securing a free ticket to visit it during Easter break, so there I went. I decided to round up the trip with a fancy lunch in a place I also wanted to visit.

The Madrid underground system Metro de Madrid was the third underground line to open in Europe, after Moscow and London. It ran a little short of 3.5 km, with eight stations, when King Alfonso XIII inaugurated it in October 1919. Subsequent ampliations and renovations of the line were carried out until it reached its current 24 km and 33 stations (plus twelve more lines). The city expanded, its population increased, and underground trains grew with both, going from four to six carriages in the 1960s. The stations were renovated to fit the new, longer trains. Most of them. The ampliations of the stations of Bilbao and Iglesia made it inefficient to do the same with the stop that lay in-between – Chamberí. Thus, this station was locked down – and bricked off – in 1966.

The city forgot about the station’s existence for decades, until in the early 2000s, it was turned into part of the Underground’s museum network Museos de Metro de Madrid or Andén 0. Today, Estación de Chamberí can be visited for free, but only under reservation. Pre-pandemic, I looked into it a few times, and never found a spot, then the whole thing slipped my mind, until I relearnt about it, and lucked out.

I took the train to Madrid and walked from Recoletos to the square where the station was built Plaza de Chamberí. The original entrance has long disappeared, so the underground area is accessed through an ugly metal kiosk and a spiral staircase. However, the original station looks completely different. It was designed by Antonio Palacios (1878 – 1945), a Spanish urbanist and architect with a very recognisable style, whose most important works still stand in Madrid (such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes and Palacio de Comunicaciones). My entry slot was 11:30, and I arrived with plenty of time – trains have been unreliable lately so I gave myself a wide margin. When most of the group had arrived, we went down the modern stairs that yields to the old hall. Characteristic white tiles are laid along the access tunnel that leads to the original ticketing stands and the exit control. The station used to have a skylight, now closed off. The original stairs and maps still stand, along the Metro logo – though everything has been adapted for wheelchair-users.

Ghost Station of Chamberí. Entrance corridor and old ticketing booths

The group comprised 25 people, with a surprising amount of non-Spanish speakers – at least seven, who of course did not care about the guide’s explanation, which was little more than the Wikipedia page (so I guess anyone can take the visit. Print out the wiki and read along). There were families with kids who tried to yell over anything the guide said. Furthermore, underground trains still run through the station, which make for cool pictures, but their six-minute frequency drowns all the given explanations. It was hard to actually get into the “ghost station” mood.

Estación de Chamberí does look really cool though. Unfortunately, glass panels separate the platform from the tracks – they are dirty and get in the way of pictures of the other side of the platform. However, it was interesting to see the old advertisement mosaics – they used to be painted on tiles, and built into the walls themselves, and surrounded by very cool darker slabs with metallic tint. The visit takes about 40 minutes, and on the way out, you get to go through the old ticket gates, which have a very ingenious way of opening – you step on the little platform in front of them, which triggers a latch, and you can push the gate open. Really fun.

Ghost Station of Chamberí. Collage showing details - the name of the station on the old logo, tiles, the platform, and a train coming through

Truth be told, I had booked another free visit before lunch, but I realised I had messed up the location. I cancelled that one before entering the ghost station so the ticket would be available for someone else to use. And thus, I had a bit of time before my lunch reservation at 14:00. Since the weather was nice, I decided to walk to my next spot, and I spent the extra time – and some not-extra money – in one of the big bookshops in the centre of Madrid. At 13:50, I arrived at the back entrance of the hotel Hotel Riu Plaza España. This hotel opened in 2019 in a mid-20th century skyscraper (Edificio España) designed and engineered by brothers Julián and Jose María Otamendi. It is a 26-floor tower which was the highest building in the city at the time of its construction. Situated in the square called Plaza de España, it is close to the Royal Palace and Main Square.

Edificio España - tower like building in reddish and white brick, spanning 26 floors. It is the Riu hotel now.

The hotel has a large terrace on what would be the 27th floor, a rooftop bar and a restaurant or “gastro bar”, whatever the current buzz word means. Entry to the terrace is 10 € (5 € on a weekday), and food is not on the cheap side (everything around that area is stupidly expensive), but I found a deal at their Edén Gastro Bar: one-course lunch + drink + entry to the rooftop terrace for 30€ which allowed me to skip the queue.

I did skip the “ticket-buying” line, but there is only one lift to go to the rooftop, so that queue I had to wait. I ended up reaching the restaurant around 14:10 or 14:15, and snagged a counter-with-a-view seat. I ordered a salmon poké and a drink, and got a few complimentary snacks and breadsticks to complete the meal.

Rooftop picture showing Madrid's Plaza de España and Royal Palace. Blurred in the foreground, lunch

Afterwards, I climbed the stairs to the terrace, officially called 360º Rooftop Bar, on the 27th floor. Music was blaring and there were tons of people drinking overpriced cocktails. The views were cool, sort of a once-in-a-lifetime thing that I don’t think I’d need again. The terrace has a small all-glass balcony that I did not wait the queue for, and a glass platform that would probably impress a bit more if the glass under your feet were clean(er). The terrace was completed by a tacky bull sculpture with metallic-gold testicles.

Madrid rooftop view - low houses with red brick roofs, and in the very background a few highrises

I walked around a couple of times, and then I headed back to the train station after calling it a day. I killed time reading one of the books I had just got, and time flew on the train. It was a nice little outing, but I did mess up with one of the locations, so it could have been more efficient. I guess not every little trip can work flawlessly…

11th March 2023: Rocks from the land and fish from the sea (Madrid, Spain)

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Back in 2018, when going to Madrid’s Geomineral Museum (Museo Geominero), I stumbled upon an event in the Mining Engineering University – something called Expominerales. At the time, I did not have time to explore it, and only later did I realise what I had missed – an international fair for the trade of minerals, rocks and fossils. I made a mental note to check the event out the following year, but something came up and I completely forgot about the whole thing. In 2020 the pandemic struck, and finally in 2023, almost five years to the day, I went back to this event held in Madrid.

Expominerales is held yearly at the working engineering school Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía (ETSIME), which offers the bachelor’s degree in Mining Engineering, and the one in Energy Engineering (whatever this last one is). The first weekend of every month, the school organises a “mineral-world flea market”, and the second weekend of March, it hosts an international mineral, gem and fossil fair, with shopping stands and different workshops and activities. After a few cancellations due to Covid, it returned in 2022 and it’s back to its former glory in 2023 – Expominerales XLII, the 42th edition of the fair.

The ETSIME in Madrid. Pink-and-white building from the 19th century, accessible through stairs, with flags hanging over the door

Mining Engineering became a formal education path in Spain in 1777, originally in the town of Almadén, a mercury hub. The school was moved to Madrid in 1835 and a two-building campus was ordered. The historical building in the ETSIME (M1) was designed by architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, and decorated by ceramist Daniel Zuloaga between 1884 and 1893. The second building (M2) was damaged during the Civil War, and has suffered several modifications to accommodate classrooms and laboratories. The premises also include a reproduction of a mine, Mina Museo Marcelo Jorissen, however this one is closed for renovation – a lot of that seems to be going on around the university, since part of the decorations of the buildings are also covered.

The M1 historical building has a central cloister with an ironwork colonnade. The building is rectangular, and on the short sides there are two symmetrical wards. One holds the historical mining museum, the other one the historical library. The central cloister is the main area where Expominerales is held, on the ground and first floor. On Saturday, the exhibit opened at 10:00, and we were there a bit later in order to sign up for the first guided visit at 11:00 (3€) – we wanted to take it so we had access to several rooms that would otherwise be closed to us. The idea was being there before families with kids started arriving and the activities became overcrowded – it turned out in the end that most the activities were indeed organised for children, so it did not really make a difference. Furthermore, the visit we feared full only had 6 attendees.

We had one hour before the guided visit that we spent looking at the stands on the ground floor on the M1 building. The guide was a student who might have been partying the previous night, because he sounded a little out of it – forgetting info and words, even things related to his own degree.

First, we went to see the mineral collection, the origin of the historical museum in the M1 building, Museo Histórico-Minero Don Felipe de Borbón y Grecia. The mineral collection was started in 1831, and throughout the years it was increased with new minerals donated by different institutions. It was later expanded to cover palaeontology and historical artefacts related to mining and other earth sciences. Though a lot of the displays are scattered throughout he building, the original museum dates from the 19th century, and it has four sections: the mineral collection, the fossil collection, the cave bear collection and the mining archaeology section, totalling over 10,000 items.

The historical mining museum at ETSIME Madrid. It is a large ward with cedar wood shelves from floor to ceiling, filled with rocks and fossils. The picture also shows some close-ups of rocks, two cave bear skulls, and a cluster of fossilised snail-like animals

Today, the museum is named after King Felipe VI, who visited the museum in the late 1980s after the university reached out to him to propose the name. The then prince came to visit then, and the name “the king’s stairs” was given to the set of side stairs he used – Escaleras del Rey.

We also visited the small hall where candidates read their theses, a little hall with spectacular ceramic tiles by Zuloaga, and finally the historical library, with obsolete but cool volumes. The library also dates back from the 19th century, with the walls covered in wooden shelves, with a small metal staircase to access the upper balcony. Unfortunately both this one and the one in the museum were cordoned off.

Library in ETSIME. It is a large room with cedar wood shelves from floor to ceiling, and a spiral staircase.

The visit ended at the lecture hall on building M2, one of the few remaining areas of the original design. It is a marble room with wooden benches and decorated windows that represent the original subjects taught to Mining Engineers. After we were left off, we sat down at the cafeteria for a drink.

Lecture hall in ETSIME (Madrid). It's a marble room, rather dark, with smoked windows representing different subjects of the Mining Engineering Degree

We recharged batteries, and then we had a look at the stands on the first floor of the M1 building, alongside the collection of apparatus that they had. Afterwards, we decided to separate in order to do shopping. Expominerales hosted over 30 stands, national and international.

Expominerales. A view of the ETSIME cloister from the second floor, showing different stands and lots of people peering curiously

I, being the nerd that I am, got myself a tiny slice of iron meteorite (from Geoterra Minerals), a mosasaur fossilised tooth (from Carlos Hammann, who also had amazing megalodon teeth that I will never be able to afford), a decent-sized of recrystallised bismuth (from Rossell Minerals), and a small piece of black tourmaline (from The MineralShop) – all for 51€.

Collage: a fossilised tooth, a bit of mineral in metallic colours, a slice of meteorite with silver orthogonal markings, and a bit of shiny black rock

When we met again, it was a bit past 13:30. There were too many people by then – families had started arriving, so we decided to leave. We had booked at a nearby restaurant for lunch, and they did not mind accommodating us a little earlier. The restaurant, called DeAtún Ponzano specialises in tuna dishes – particularly Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), sustainably caught in the Straight of Gibraltar.

Before overfishing was even a thing, Phoenicians settled in the south-west of Spain somewhere between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE – the city of Cádiz, credited as being the longest-standing city in Europe, may have been the first port. The Phoenicians observed that the bluefin tuna migrated from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean every year around the same dates, and later they came back to the ocean. These guys came up with a very simple technique – that was later developed further by the Romans and perfected in the Islamic period: the almadraba.

An almadraba is a portable but complex net which is lowered for the migration period. The bigger fish are funnelled into a box-like construction, and the smaller ones swim right through it. Once the almadraba is full, a number of fishing boats lift it in a process called levantada (raising). Expert fishermen walk onto the nets, discard any small specimen that might have been trapped, and choose the tuna that will be sold, generally individuals heavier than 200 kg.

Since the fish are selected on a case by case basis, the amount of both the catch and by-catch is small in comparison to other fishing methods. Both the seasonality and craftsmanship of the whole process make it much more sustainable than others – of course, this also causes fewer pieces in the market, which in turn increases the price. Furthermore, all the fish are wild, hand-picked, and only bled out when they are loaded onto the ship. Thus, the quality is extremely high. Another factor that makes almadraba-caught tuna more expensive is the fact that walking onto the levantada is dangerous. Fishermen have been seriously hurt by struggling tuna, as some of the fish might weigh up to 500 kg.

Working almost exclusively high-quality tuna means that DeAtún is not a restaurant on the cheap side of things. I’ve actually traced down their tuna provider and the prices are rather cost-adjusted for almadraba-caught tuna. There’s another thing to consider, too, which is that the Spanish law forces restaurants to freeze fish that is going to be served either raw or quasi-raw, at least for 24 hours at a temperature under -20 ºC – this is done to destroy a fish parasite called Anisakis, which can cause stomach distress and serious allergic reactions. Apparently, the perfect temperature to keep the tuna properties is -60 ºC. So yay Anisakis-safe almadraba-caught tuna all year round (though it’s true that the freezing law makes it impossible to eat fresh tuna raw).

We got a welcome tapa of boiled potatoes with olive oil and herbs (“papas aliñás”), a favourite from southwestern of Spain, the same area where the almadraba tuna are caught. We shared some European anchovies (Engraulis encrasicolus) “anchoas del Cantábrico” with tomato and toasted bread. These anchovies are salted for at least six months, cleaned, and stored in olive oil. They have a strong flavour, and are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I adore them. We also shared a portion of “ortiguillas” (Mediterranean snakelocks sea anemone Anemonia sulcata, battered and fried), also typical of the south-west – I’ve never been much of a fan though.

Lunch at DeAtún. Collage with a potato salad, anchovies and battered seafood balls

Finally, as my tuna preference is raw, I was wondering whether I wanted sashimi or tartar. In the end, I decided to try a combo (“trio DeAtún”): tuna sashimi (slices), tuna tartar (dice) and tuna tataki (heat-sealed slices), with a side taste of different sauce emulsions – wasabi, kimchi and curry. The tuna cuts used for these preparations (descargamento and tarantelo) would be the otoro or toro Japanese cuts, which are appropriate for raw preparations – technically the best ones, fatty or very fatty meat. I don’t love tataki, thus my original reticence to try this combo, but it was good. My favourite bit was the sashimi though, the tartar was missing a bit of spice.

I was offered chopsticks to eat the dish, and I accepted – easier to handle the fish. That apparently made the maître think that I had been the one choosing the restaurant, because in his words I “seemed to be an expert, chopsticks and all”. That was hilarious – I mean, why offer chopsticks if you don’t expect them to be accepted? For the record, although I booked the table, I did not choose the restaurant – it would have been a little on the “too fancy” side for me. The truth is, there were a bunch of very-elaborated dishes that we decided to give a miss, and we went for the raw tuna.

Lunch at DeAtún. A plate with three tuna cuts. The centre is round, and rose-like, and the sides are extended on a line. The fish is uncooked and it looks dark red. There's a similar dish in the background, with more cuts

Desserts were okay, but not the reason we had chosen this place. The point was eating tuna – raw tuna in my case – and the restaurant delivered. I was however amused by tables around us refusing the raw options even when the chef himself came out to greet them and recommend the dishes (someone over there must have been an acquittance, I don’t really know). Finally, we set back home to compare treasures and plot going back to Expominerales in its 2024 edition – at a time where we can snatch some discounted rocks.

12th & 13th February 2023. The Epic Apocalypse Tour in Madrid (Spain)

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The year 2020 was going to be so amazing that I actually would have had to choose the things I wanted to do and sacrifice others. It didn’t turn out that great in the end, with lots of rescheduling and cancellations. I was eventually able to budget time and money for one of those rescheduled events – the joint concert by the metal bands Epica and Apocalyptica in their Epic Apocalypse Tour. For a while, however, there was a bit of uncertainty with dates, as they bounced between Sunday 12th and Monday 13th of February, so I needed to juggle work dates in order to make sure I’d be free on Monday. In the end, I was all clear, all the concert-related activities were set for Sunday evening, and I decided to make a two-day trip out of it – I needed to take a hotel for Sunday anyway.

I arrived in Madrid around 9:30 in the morning. I had some time before my first appointment so I walked into one of the large parks of the city Parque del Buen Retiro, which is part of the Unesco World Heritage Site Paisaje de la Luz (Light Landscape), officially called Paseo del Prado y el Buen Retiro, paisaje de las artes y las ciencias, declared in 2021.

Parque del Buen Retiro was built in the 17th century for one of Felipe IV’s palaces, and it was opened in the late 18th century as public park. The park was almost destroyed during the war against Napoleon’s troops in the early 19th century, so most of it has been rebuilt. Aside from the obvious flora, it features sculptures, fountains, buildings… It is home to a lot of birds, and unfortunately a large number of invasive and fearless monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), whose culling has been controversial in recent years. I got to see common blackbirds (Turdus merula), a European green woodpecker (Picus viridis) and a European robin (Erithacus rubecula).

One of the most important features of the park is the sculpture Monumento al Ángel Caído, which represents an angel falling from grace. It was originally designed by Ricardo Bellber, who made it in plaster in 1877. It was later cast in bronze and the original plaster destroyed, and eventually the sculpture was made into a part of a fountain in 1885. Around the area, there is also an ancient water mill, and to my surprise, the almond trees (Prunus amygdalus) had started blossoming.

Retiro Park collage: a pathway with trees and bushes on both sides, ducks, and a robin.

Retiro Park collage: a water mill, blossoming almond trees, and the fallen angel fountain

At 10:15 I had a guided visit to the Real Observatorio de Madrid (ROM), commissioned around 1785 by Carlos III, as an centre to develop and study astronomy, geodesy, geophysics and cartography. The main building is the astronomical observatory, built by Juan de Villanueva in what then was the outskirts of the city. Today, ROM belongs to the National Geographical Institute (IGN), and it is home to the National Astronomical Observatory, the Central Geophysics Observatory, and the data gathering division of the National Volcanic Service, though no measurements are taken there. The main astronomy measurements are carried out in the Centro Astronómico de Yebes, in a town around 80 km north-west of Madrid. The observatory is also part of the Unesco World Heritage Site.

The visit comprises three stops. The first one is the main building, called Edificio Villanueva, which has three rooms – the main rotunda with a Foucault pendulum, the library, with the spot where gravity was first measured in Spain, and the “Time room”, where the sun used to be traced to determine the hour.

ROM collage. A small Neoclassical building, an inner room with a pendulum and telescopes, a telescope and a 19th century library.

The second stop is the Great Telescope, a replica of one that William Herschel built in the 18th century – Hershchel was one of the greatest telescope makers of the time, and is credited with discovering the planet Uranus, two of its moons, and two moons of Saturn. The telescope was destroyed during the war against the French, but later rebuilt thanks to the number of laminates that had been preserved – the original had a focal distance of 7.6 m and a 61-cm diameter mirror (which is displayed in the main building), and Herschel himself considered it the best he ever built.

Herschel grand telescope: a wooden scaffolding structure keeping a huge black tube pointing at the stas

The final stop, the little museum of “Earth and Universe Sciences” has a small collection of ancient instruments used for astronomy, navigation, and geophysics. There are also a couple of seismographs – one of them new, which is up and running – and material retrieved from the volcanic eruptions of El Hierro in 2011 and La Palma in 2021.

Collage. Ancient telescope, old tide measuring device, an old globe, and lava bombs

I had planned for a typical sandwich at an iconic bar afterwards, but I ran into a political demonstration. Thus, I scratched that idea and took the underground westwards. When I was in Egypt, one of the places I visited was Lake Nasser, created by the Aswan High dam. The lake swallowed a lot of villages and monuments, but a few of them, such as Abu Simbel and the Temple of Philae were saved by Unesco. Between 1960 and 1980, a total of 24 monuments were saved, and five out of these were presented as “grants-in-return” to five countries which had offered exceptional technical and financial assistance to the campaign – Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the United States and Spain, the latter being impressive as Spain was in the middle of the dictatorship, and pretty shunned by the international community at the time.

The monument was a small and ruined temple in the now-flooded town of Debod, to which it owns its name Templo de Debod (Temple of Debod). Dedicated to the god Amun, it was built around the location of the First Cataract of the Nile, some 15 km south of Aswan, about 2200 years ago, though the core of the building may have been older. The monument was actually affected by the original dam at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was covered in water for most of the year, which destroyed its colours and damaged the reliefs.

During the Unesco salvage mission, it was dismantled, and eventually granted and taken to Spain, and “freely” reconstructed – a lot of information had been lost, and there were missing blocks. National stone was used to fill in the gaps, and the gates (remains of the pylons) were built in the wrong order, according to some old pictures. The restorers built an air-conditioning system, a wooden roof, and the main hall was closed off with a glass door and window panes. Today, the temple is open to the public at weekends, but unprotected from the Spanish weather – rather different from the Egyptian one – and pollution, it is rapidly deteriorating.

I went inside the temple once when I was a child, and I had a clear memory of it that kept surfacing when I was in Egypt – so I wanted to go back. The entry is free, but capacity is reduced, so I had to queue for almost an hour to enter. I finally matched my memory to reality. The interior of the sanctuary has a small chapel and some carved stones had been taken to a makeshift second floor to display them as a little museum.

A collage of a small Egyptian temple - it has two floating gates that lead up to the main building, which is small with four columns. One picture shows a tiny and dark inside room with an altar.

After the temple, I got lunch on the go, then walked towards the hotel to check in and change clothes. Around 16:15, I set off to La Riviera for the concert. I had a Meet and Greet ticket and had to be there before 17:00. Personnel from the venue were extremely nice, and there was no chaos at all, even if things had been a little disorganised and some fans were lacking M&G confirmation emails. Everything was well-handed and everyone who had paid for an upgrade got through. There were about 30 people to meet and greet Epica and we were ten for Apocalyptica.

Apocalyptica is a Finnish four-man band – Eicca Toppinen, Perttu Kivilaakso, Paavo Lötjönen and Mikko Sirén – founded in 1993. They are “semi-officially” a symphonic metal band, but they’ve ventured into everything from Metallica covers (which was their origin) to pure classical works. They have a very specific style heavily using classical cellos and combining them with modern drums. They currently collaborate with American – self-identified as Cuban in the concert – singer Franky Perez for vocals.

Meeting the four of them was really fun. I got autographs and took the most epic picture I’ve ever taken with a band or artist before. As we were only ten, after it was over, I had time to buy some merchandising and still be the second person to settle on first row – despite having decided that I was going to sit back and relax.

Apocalyptica white and black poster, signed by the four members

General admission started at 18:00, and the crowd was surprisingly tame throughout the whole thing. The venue filled up and the supporting band, Wheel, came up at 18:30. Wheel is a Finnish progressive metal band that consists of James Lascelles (Vocals/Guitar), Santeri Saksala (Drums), Aki ‘Conan’ Virta (Bass) and Jussi Turunen (Lead Guitar).

Wheel Setlist

  1. Hyperion
  2. Blood drinker
  3. Movement
  4. Vultures
  5. Wheel

Wheel playing, each member at his insturment: bass, guitar, singer and drummer

The second band was Epica, which I remember having listening to back when the world was young. They are a Dutch symphonic metal band currently composed by Simone Simons (lead vocals), Mark Jansen (rhythm guitar, vocals), Coen Janssen (keyboards, synthesizer), Ariën van Weesenbeek (drums), Isaac Delahaye (lead guitar) and Rob van der Loo (bass). Simone can go insanely high with her voice, and she has an amazing presence on stage, and the whole band has an immense amount of energy – she also reminded me of a comic character. The keyboardist had a lot of personality too, and he was extremely fun.

Epica Setlist

  1. Abyss of Time – Countdown to Singularity (recording)
  2. The essence of silence
  3. Victims of contingency
  4. Unleashed
  5. The final lullaby
  6. The obsessive devotion
  7. The skeleton key
  8. Rivers
  9. Code of life
  10. Cry for the moon
  11. Beyond the Matrix
  12. Consign to oblivion

Collage of Epica playing, showing different members at their choice of insturment - singer, bassist, guitarist, and keyboardist with a portable keyboard

Finally Apocalyptica came on stage, and it was extremely fun. The things those guys do to their classical cellos would make some classical musicians cry, but the sound is super-powerful. We had Franky Perez for vocals, and a very fun moment regarding “listen to our classical music album at home, because we still feel like death metal”. They interacted a lot with the public, and it felt somehow very friendly / warm – yes, I’m talking about metal here. It was really that fantastically weird.

Apocalyptica Setlist

  1. Ashes of the Modern World
  2. Grace
  3. I’m not Jesus
  4. Not strong enough
  5. Rise
  6. En route to mayhem
  7. Shadowmaker
  8. I don’t care
  9. Nothing else matters
  10. Inquisition Symphony
  11. Seek & Destroy
  12. Farewell
  13. In the Hall of the Mountain King

Apocalyptica playing with Franky Perez. Perez is in the foreground, dressed in black. The thee cello-playing members are in the frame, playing. The drums peek behind them, but you can't spot the drummer

Apocalyptica playing at La Riviera. They have classical cellos. Two of the members stand on the sides, playing their cellos. Another one is walking swinging his as if it weighed nothing, The final one is slamming drums in the background.

We finished off just short of 23:00, I bought off some fast food for dinner, and headed back to the hotel to have a shower and get some sleep. I was woken up early in the morning due to the cleaning crew and the garbage mini-vans noises, but I did not leave bed until 9:00, then set off at 9:30. I bought some cold coffee on the way and walked into the former royal palace gardens, now public park Jardines del Campo del Moro.

Though I’d seen the gardens a few times before, this was the first time I actually walked into them. Despite the frost covering everything, I got a nice view of the palace and different fountains and buildings sprinkled throughout the green – Chalet de Corcho, is a small hut with coloured windows; and Chalecito de la Reina a wooden house that is currently closed. I was insanely amused by a little grass-cutting robot.

Jardines del Campo del Moro. Collage. It's winter and most trees are grey and bare. At the end of the walkway stands the Neoclassical Royal Palace. Two smaller buildings - one of them is white with brown beams, reminscing of German architecture; another one is a small kiosk with colourful windows - red, green...

I wandered around for an hour or so, then headed off via underground to the National library of Spain Biblioteca Nacional de España for the absolutely worst guided visit of my life. Like… it’s true that it’s free, but tickets run out within hours of coming out – on the 20th of the month, for the following month. I’d actually been trying to do this since Covid lockdowns ended… It turns out, we did not see any real books, we could not even peer into the reading area, the book and reading museum is closed and the only information we got was… that the guide did not like the Library. We did not get to see anything interesting or that we could not see on our own, and we did not get to learn anything, so this was a huge blunder. Live and learn – but it was one of the few things that was open on a Monday. The library is a huge Neoclassical building with a fantastic marble staircase inside. The doors and gates are protected by intrincate ironwork fences.

Biblioteca Nacional de España. A Neoclassical building in white and grey tones. The exterior has columns and statues of writers. The interior showcases a pair of twin staircases with the statue of one of the most important library directors between both.

I met with family for a quick lunch and then we went for a walk. We had thought about going to one of the terraces to see the cityscape, but it was closed because it was a Monday. We ended up at the Parque del Retiro park again to make some time and walk. We sat in the sun for a while, then went to see the Palacio de Velázquez there. Currently, it’s part of the modern art museum Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, and I did not really care much about the exhibits, but I like the building. Architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco built it in brick (with ceramic tiles by Daniel Zuloaga) for the Mining Exhibit in 1883, inspired by London’s Crystal Palace, now gone. The interior is pristine white with hints of iron architecture, but the building’s official style is “neorenaissance historicism” whatever that means.

Palacio de Velazquez: A brick building with large windows and tile decoration. The inside is all white with bits of iron architecture.

Velázquez Bosco and Zuloaga also came together when they designed another building I really like, the glass-and-iron greenhouse Palacio de Cristal, which was built to home tropical flora and fauna from the Philippines in an exhibit in 1887. In front of the palace, there’s a small pond home to some cheeky ducks and geese.

Palacio de cristal. A huge greenhouse with a dome, and two wings. A white duck wanders in the foreground. Between the greenhouse and the duck there's a small pond.

Then, we went to have a snack. Trying to find something on the map before the trip, I’d come across a place called La Mejor Tarta de Chocolate del Mundo, which translates to “The best chocolate cake in the world” and that had to be tried! It was really nice, even if the place was pretty small and felt a bit cramped.

A slice of chocolate cake in front of mugs and teapots

We finally took a stroll down towards the sunset, and I took the train back without much of a hitch, then drove home

20th November 2022: Naturaleza Encendida – Origen (Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Spain)

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It seems that the Madrid exhibits in the month of December are not being the most successful ones – this time, the weather did not help. After ten day’s worth of rain, it cleared out, but then, on Tuesday, the skies opened yet again. It was raining like there was no tomorrow by the time my train got to Madrid. Boo.

Just after sunset, my sibling and I went to the botanical garden Real Jardín Botánico to see the light show Naturaleza Encendida: Origen (Lit-up Nature: Origins). There had been some issues about the promoter cancelling the activity due to rain with little advance notice, so they decided not to close it. They instead resorted to close parts of the exhibit at random, and herding all the visitors in the same corridors, despite the puddles forming on the uneven ground. After two weeks of rain, something should have been done about it. Moreover, a few of the exhibits were turned off – not sure if just off or high wired. I wish I had some good boots, because I ended up pretty soaked, despite the raincoat and the umbrella. At least I did not ended up in a random puddle.

In 2021, the topic was sea life, and in 2022 the topic is… mushrooms. So there were spores, moulds and… mushrooms. Big mushrooms with lights, or made with small lights, or… just blown with hot air. Lots of mushrooms. The music was a bit creepy though, even if the mushrooms lit up and down with the beat. There is also an exhibit about moulds, with huge screens showing pictures of spores and microorganisms under the microscope.

Most people were antsy and cranky in the rain, and everybody wanted you to move out of the way – in different directions at the same time. A really good thing about it was the cup of hot chocolate that we had booked with the ticket. It was really nice to get in the middle of the cold and rain because it was warm and sweet. We drank it on our way out to the train, and just as we stepped out of the botanical garden… it just stopped raining.

Light display collage: on the upper left, giant red spores; on the lower left a wavy line of lights. On the right, a giant bunch mushrooms illuminated in green from inside the umbrella

Collage of lights display. A mushroom made of little yellow and white lights; a bunch of name mushrooms in red; a hanging mould-like string of lights between two dark trees

All in all, I was not too impressed. I really think that the organisers should have figured out something about the cancellations and the pathways, since they obviously could not do anything about the weather. My favourite display were the “Baymax mushrooms”, even if most of them had lost their illumination, which was actually kind of the point…

A blow-up mushroom made from plastic, looking like it's floating. The lights inside make it glow green and pink. In the background there is a building gate in red, and a pond between the two.

6th December 2022: Tim Burton’s Labyrinth (Madrid, Spain)

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Despite having decided that immersive exhibits were not for me and the fact that I’m not a Tim Burton fan, here I found myself in Madrid to see this one: Tim Burton’s Labyrinth El Laberinto de Tim Burton. Truth be told, I was only there because my sibling asked me to accompany them. I did not find premium tickets for any of the dates either of us was available, but the 6th of December is a national holiday in Spain, and I calculated that if we were there at opening times it might not be too busy, and we would not come across too many kids.

Tim Burton is an American film-maker born in 1958. His first “hit” may have been Stalk of the Celery Monster, which he wrote, directed and animated when he was a student in the California Institute of Arts, in 1979. It presumably earned him a good grade, but more importantly, an animator’s apprenticeship at Disney Animation Studios. With time, he developed a shrill eerie style, with lots of colours and creepy designs that have increased as years have passed, sometimes defined as “gothic fantasy” – I would refer to it as strident and macabre at times, to be honest. His greatest or most famous works include Beetlejuice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare before Christmas, and the first two Batman films.

The exhibition is hosted in a weird place in Madrid, Espacio Ibercaja Delicias, which might look less… abandoned… when it hasn’t been raining for days, I guess. The space consists on a big tent – where we were not going, it might be designed for circuses or so, some kind of bar / cafeteria, and the monster-like building that hosts the exhibit. It is called a labyrinth because out of the thirty-ish wards, you have to go around choosing doors to see different rooms of the exhibit, insomuch that you would need four rounds to see the complete thing. In the end, you choose 15 rooms to see, out of which some are common, and you reach them from whichever previous place you were in. Others are “less common” and you can reach them through several doors, but not all. You enter the labyrinth through a toothy monster’s mouth, then there’s a big button that “decides” on the first room for you.

Collage: exterior of the Labyrinth, which looks like a one-eyed tentacle monster, and the inner entrance monster whose mouth is the curtain you have to cross to enter the different rooms.

In the rooms there are sculptures that represent the characters, some of them with the original clothes that were designed for them (if the film is a live-action), the plain clothes, and on the walls sketches and animations, some original, some “inspired”, and some made specifically for the exhibit. Some rooms are small and rather empty, others are decorated like the movie sets. There are tricks with lights, and some mirrors, but nothing “immersive” about it, and way too many people around considering the size of some rooms.

The idea of a labyrinth is interesting, but I don’t think the price warrants just seeing half of the exhibit, especially considering the big “misses” of not seeing all the The Nightmare before Christmas. We took about 40 – 45 minutes to go through the 15 rooms.

What I am aware we saw included:

  • Beetlejuice
  • Edward Scissorhands
  • Batman and Batman returns
  • Mars attacks!
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  • Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass
  • Corpse Bride
  • Frankenweenie
  • Jack from The Nightmare before Christmas

Collage of Tim Burton's characters: Batman's Pengun, Edward Scissorhands, Emily from Corpse Bride

Collage of Tim Burton's characters: Alien from Mars Attack; the clothing from the Chocolatier (I think) in Charlie and the Chocolate factory, surrounded by twirling candy canes; Beetlejuice

Collage of Tim Burton's characters: Jack from The Nightmare before Christmas; The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, with some giant mushrooms behind; the boy and the dog of Frankenweenie

I think this is an exhibit for die-hard fans that are willing to pay for the premium ticket and see the whole thing twice. What it’s not, and that’s for sure, is for kids.

On both ways, we had some train trouble – delays and technical problems, but nothing too dramatic, and I was home before sunset – but after buying a stack of Christmas candy canes! And my sibling enjoyed, which was the goal anyway.

2nd December 2022: “Tutankhamun Immersive Exhibition” in Madrid (Spain)

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In 1922, an archaeologist named Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Tutankhamun belonged to the Eighteenth Dynasty. He reigned over Egypt around 1330 BCE, and restored the Ancient Egyptian religion. When he died, he was buried in a smaller-than-expected tomb, probably because his death was sudden and unexpected – for a while, it was hypothesised that he had been murdered, but it seems that he died from a combination of an infection and several previous pathologies (nothing to do with the fact that his parents were brother and sister, I’m sure).

The tomb was robbed and restored twice within a few years of Tutankhamun’s death, but it was eventually buried by alluvium brought by flash floods, and the debris from other tombs being built nearby. Thus, when Carter found it in 1922, it was mostly untouched and unspoilt. The death of Carter’s sponsor George Helbert, five months after visiting the tomb, sparked the rumour about a Curse of the Pharaohs, which has inspired countless works of fiction.

In 2022, Spain is living through a fad of “immersive exhibitions”, heavily based on technology, virtual reality and computer games. I was curious about what it would be about, exactly, so I decided to celebrate the end of work season by hitting the exhibit. I was early as the day before there had been a bit of public transport trouble and you usually have more chances of getting in if you’re early rather than late. Thus, I reached Centro Cultural Matadero in Madrid about half an hour earlier than my ticket read, and I was let in without any issue.

The “immersive exhibit” Tutankamón: La Exposición Inmersiva was devised by MAD, Madrid Artes Digitales, which specialises in digital creation and immersive experiences such a this. The exhibit has been designed in cooperation with the History Channel.

The first bit was a number of panels, explaining the “Egyptmania” that swept the world after the discovery of the mummy, the process of mummification, or life in ancient Egypt. The second held a replica of the inner and outer sarcophagus, along with the mummy, then replicas a few artefacts that had been found in the tomb, including the famous golden mask the pharaoh was buried with.

Three part collage: The upper picture shows the mummy of Tutankhamun suspended from the floor, imitating an open sarcophagus with the lid open on top of that. Bottom left: reproduction of the mortuary mask, in gold and blue, it has the typical Egyptian hair and beard. Lower right: reproductions of small objects found in the grave: estelae and human-like small sculptures.

Afterwards, you go into a huge ward with a projection on all four walls plus the floor, which is very spectacular but does not tell you much about the real history of either Tutankhamun or the tomb, it was just a cool video of flashy images with a narration in first person, showing the interior of the tomb, yes, but mostly vaguely-related imaginary, including some of the Egyptian gods. What it did have, and that was neat, was an original newsreel about the opening of the tomb, including Howard’s voice.

Collage of a 3D projection. Left, from top to bottom, views of Tutankhamun's grave: the outer area, in sandstone with sculptures, and two views of the inner painting an decoration, showing figures and hyeroglyphs. On the right, a projection of lotus flowers blooming and turning into gold, representing the soul of the pharaoh.

A large ward with a projection of a starry sky on the walls. At the front, a view of Tutankhamun's mortuary mask, eyes glowing.

A projection of Tutankhamun's mortuary mask, eyes glowing. Around it, golden writing symbols, maybe hyeroglyphs.

The following area had an augmented reality game, which I won (didn’t get anything though), a photo booth that I skipped and some “I bet you didn’t know” facts – about one third of them were common knowledge, and another third was information from previous panels though.

Finally, there was a room with virtual reality glasses and headphones, but my headphones wouldn’t work – I later realised they were not plugged into anything. This represented – I think – the trip to the Egyptian underworld, as I “started” at Tutankhamun’s tomb, then there were volcanoes, and I ended up in front of Anubis, who weighed a heart against a plume – the Judgement of the Dead.

The VR experience there was the last spot in the exhibition – because I skipped the photo booth – before one went into the shop. In the end, I was there for about an hour and a half, but it almost took me two hours to arrive and an hour and half to come back.

Though I don’t regret the mental break, I have decided that immersive experiences are not for me.

13th March 2022: The outskirts of Madrid (Spain)

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I’m usually rather enthusiastic when I visit new places, but if there is a place that I’ve found kind of over-hyped, that has been the park Parque del Capricho, in Madrid. “Capricho”, which means whim or folly – in its architectural meaning of an often extravagant picturesque building erected to suit a fanciful taste, or building erected for decoration, typical of the French and English decorative gardens from the 18th century. The park is located in Madrid, and the only romantic garden that remains in Madrid. It was promoted by the 12th Duchess of Osuna between 1787 and 1839, and became a recreational area for the nobility of the time. Some of the most important gardeners and landscapers of the time worked on its design. It was declared Historical Garden in 1934 and restored in 1999.

So it is a garden, with some plants, some flowers, and a bunch of weird-looking decorative items, that takes itself a bit too seriously. It won’t accept pets and you can’t bring any food inside (it has some cage-looking “lockers” were you can leave your stuff). There is a strict capacity control which does nothing for it not to feel ridiculously crowded on a regular nice-weather Sunday. Maybe it improves in spring / summer, and with fewer people, but I had some stuff to do in the area and that is why I made time to visit today.

It had been raining all week, so I had mostly scrapped my plans. It was a great sunny day though so in the end I decided to get there. Parking the car was ridiculously easy – though the parking spot was maxed out, I found a very easy one in the avenue next to the park – good, it was close as I would not put my sandwich in the crappy-looking lockers and preferred taking it back to the car. Then I walked in, and explored for a couple of hours – and don’t tell anyone, but I ate a piece of candy, just to be rebellious (≧▽≦) (and to make sure I did not sugar crash without any food around, but that does not really make for a good story).

While I of course did not expect everything to be blooming and colourful and green… I hoped that it would have at least maintained through winter. No such luck. A bunch of areas were fenced off, the footpaths were swamped with puddles, and the water in the ponds was not as clean as it should have been. Exploring the 14 hectares took me about an hour and a half, considering that I did go into all the little paths, but all the buildings were closed and / or under constructions. There is a Civil War bunker in the park too, but that is only open through pre-booked guided visit and I did not know I was going to do this 30 minutes before I jumped on the car. The few flowers that had already bloomed included the garden pansies (Viola × wittrockiana, which are after all winter flowers), and the yellow and white daffodils (narcissus, maybe the subspecies jonquil Narcissus jonquilla). There were a couple of black swans (Cygnus atratus) at the main pond, and mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) on every second water body, including fountains.

Pond in the park. There are some flowers and buildings around it, and a black swan sunbathing.

Collage of different park decoration: a bush labyrinth, a fountain, and some decoration reminding of Greek temples.

Afterwards, I took a small detour to see if any of the Japanese cherry trees in the park opposite the street Parque Juan Carlos I had started blossoming. The answer was not at all. But the point was heading to the restored castle Castillo de la Alameda. The castle dates back to the 15th century, though there are older remains underneath, and it is thought that its presence is the one that got all the aristocrats to flock to the area, as it switched from defensive castle to palace.

The remains of the castle feature an irregular moat with lobe-like structures in the corners, and the restored keep, which stands up to the first floor, though it must have been much higher. An interesting characteristic of the castle is that it was built using a kind of mortar made from flint. I have to say it was a nice surprise, free to visit.

A clover-shaped castle ruins, all white. There is not much of the castle left, but the moat is almost intact, though empty

To the side of the castle there is a casemate – a fortified machine gun emplacement from the Spanish Civil War, called Nido de Ametralladoras (Machine gun nest), a semi buried cement block for snipers of sorts to defend the position.

Concrete block that was used as a machine-gun base

Then I moved onto Mejorada del Campo a little town near Madrid that only has one tourist attraction – a… handmade cathedral. Of sorts – Catedral de Justo Gallego .

Justo Gallego was born in 1925. Deeply Catholic, he became a young monk-in-training but had to leave the monastery when he contracted tuberculosis. He made a vow to erect a cathedral to the Virgin Mary in her “Lady of the Pillar” avocation, and he sort of did. Throughout the next 60 years he worked on building the cathedral, using recycled material, and on his own. His work came to fame when a soft-drink company made him the star of an advertising campaign, which made him and his work famous.

The cathedral has 12 towers, a crypt, two cloisters, a baptistery, and the main nave is 20×50 metres, with a 35 metres high dome. Most of it was done by hand, using discarded items such as tubes and bicycle wheels. It is garish and childish in its decoration, but I found it to have some strange allure. The cathedral has drawn the attention of international artists and institutions, and apparently Gallego built it without any blueprints or knowledge of construction. Upon his death, an architectural studio started working on “legalising” the cathedral (from an urbanistic point of view; it is not an official Christian building) and is it is now under management from an NGO. It was just a bizarre thing to see, but interesting since I was in the area (sort of. Construction made the route stupidly long), glad I’ve visited it at least once. I did catch a European white stork (Ciconia ciconia ciconia) coming home to one of the towers.

Cathedral made out of recycled items: pipes, plastic bottles, irons... there is a dome and a nave, in bizarre colours.

A stork approaches one of the towers of the cathedral

I drove off afterwards, and I have to say the weather that day was amazing – just in-between two piss-poor ones, so yay spring escapade.

Walking distance: 11.18 km (16916 steps)

30th November 2021: Naturaleza Encendida – Explorium. Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid (Spain)

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After being in semi-lock down last year, my sibling, who loves Christmas lights, asked me to accompany them to the Real Jardín Botánico, the botanical garden in Madrid. The Botanical garden was founded in 1755, adjacent to the planned museum of Natural Science, which would later become the art gallery Prado Museum. Today, it is a research centre. The garden is divided into four terraces, a main building (Edificio Villanueva), and a back terrace, and it serves as museum of live plants of sorts.

For the last few years (at least three that I’m aware), the botanical garden has spiced up its winter downtime with light shows and displays. This year, the display is called “Lit Nature: Explorium”: Naturaleza Encendida: Explorium by the company Let’s go. The topic is ocean explorers and exploration, spread throughout the three main terraces and an extra exhibit in the building.

In order to have flexibility, I got us Premium tickets in case we needed to cancel last minute, which had the extra advantage that spared us from any queues, as we had full-access between 18:00 and 19:00. We also got to see the extra exhibit without paying extra. I drove up to a mid-way train station that allowed me better schedule flexibility – and my sibling lives close-by so it gave us the option to have dinner afterwards. I took the first train and we met at the botanical garden station at 17:30. We wandered around for a little while we waited until twilight faded, and we got in, avoiding all the lines – I did a bit of astronomy maths when planning this, regarding latest sunset and shortest twilight.

The exhibit is organised so you are free to wander around each terrace, but you can only cross from the lower to the upper terraces upwards, you cannot backtrack, in order to control capacity and people in each area. It only felt a bit crowded at a couple of points, mostly around the checkpoints, as it was very difficult to hear the staff.

The whole display has thousands of little blue LEDs to get you on the ‘ocean’ scenery. The first terrace sets the mood – there are Christmas-tree looking build-ups and different types of colour-changing sculptures: turtles, pufferfish, and sea horses. The second focuses on laser and smoke, and reflection displays, and some serious-looking grouper. On the third, where the building stands, there is a little pond from where a few gigantic tentacles rise, and jellyfish hanging from the trees. The exhibit in the building itself is similar to the projections done by Team Lab.

Collage. A garden lit up at night, with different shapes: pufferfish, seahorses, a turtle... The trees and bushes are decorated with thousands of tiny blue leds

Collage. Light flashes in a dark garden, along with a colour gouper fish

Collage. Huge tentacles coming out of a pond, illuminated in red and blue; and blue jellyfish lamps hanging from trees

Collage. Light effects repeating the same patterns: a pineapple, a thisle, a khaki

We wandered around for a couple of hours, and believe me or not… the lights went out at some point! This was like climbing up (rope-way-ing up, to be honest) aaall the way up to see Nagasaki’s lights from Inasayama and getting caught in the clouds, but fortunately shorter (≧▽≦).

We left the botanical garden and took a train back. There were a few places to grab a bite around the station, so we ended up at a cosy Italian place and shared some stuff – too much to then grab some dessert though. When we left it was so cold that my car gave me the first heart attack of the winter by bleeping and showing me an orange alarm in the dashboard that means “the roads might be frosty” but scares me to death whenever I see it for the first time in the winter season. I drove off home, had a shower, went straight into work at 23:00 because how was I going to manage a free Tuesday evening without consequences?

Final waking distance: 8.50 km (though I really think that the wristband confuses my stress-driving with activity.

8th September 2021: Impromptu Madrid Run! (Spain)

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This was oh my god so unplanned that I kept improvising throughout the whole day! It all started because a Spanish publisher decided to translate a non-fiction book I’ve loved for ages – Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. The publisher flew the author in for interviews, and I guess I was disappointed that no signing event was organised. I asked the author once and the publisher another time, then shrugged it off when I got no answer. There were some interviews scheduled for him, and a book fair coming up. I guessed it was just not meant to be, but I did feel disappointed.

And then, on the 7th, Mr Adelstein shot me a message that he would sign my book if I could go to Madrid and meet him at one of his breaks. As you can imagine I just… said yes (I could not meet him that very same evening because of travel times, but I could make it on the 8th. And there I went).

It was the first time taking the train since the whole pandemic thing (hell, I had not even been on a train since Paris 2020), and a weekday so I chose the times carefully to hopefully get close to as few people as possible – it worked, as both rides nobody sat next to me.

I arrived in Madrid and transferred easily, then got out at a new station in the area of Gran Vía. The Tokyo Vice book came out that day, so I wanted to go to a big book store that would hopefully have it already. My first stop, FNAC, failed miserably, so I went to La Casa del Libro, where they told me I would find the book in a completely different section where I actually did. But at least I had it in my hands, even if I had apparently not used my credit card for so long, I got the right PIN for the wrong card (≧▽≦).

After I had the book in Spanish – I’ve owned a first edition copy in English since 2010 – I had thought that I should get a small detail for the author as he was making time for me. As he had to continue on his travelling, I decided to do something small and “consumable”, so I came up with buying some typical Madrid candy – violet sweets from La Violeta. I’d never been inside the shop, but it’s an adorable little place dating back to 1915.

It was still early for my appointment at 14:00, so I decided to head towards a square that hosts an Egyptian temple of all things. On the way I made a stop at a Starbucks for a Vanilla Frappucino, I figured out that the amount of calories would get me going and I would not have to eat until I was back – looking back it was a weird thing, but it made sense in my head at the time. I strolled around the park next to the palace Palacio Real.

The way to the temple was completely blocked off due to construction, so I decided to backtrack. I walked up the great avenue in the middle of the city Gran Vía. As I walked around, minding my business and listening to music, I kept remembering a comic by Sarah Sanders, in which she makes fun of how people won’t leave you alone when you’re wearing headphones and, well, minding your own business.

I reached the square with the fountain to the goddess Cybele Fuente de la Cibeles and the related Palace Palacio de Comunicaciones (by Antonio Palacios). The fountain dates back to the 18th century, when king Carlos III revamped a lot of Madrid trying to make it more beautiful and similar to other European capitals.

Carlos III is also responsible for the design of the modern version of one of the former wall gates, called the gate to Alcalá, the nearby town, Puerta de Alcalá. This area was declared Unesco World Heritage Site in summer 2021 as Paisaje de la Luz, so Madrid was in a celebratory mood.

I headed into the park Parque del Retiro, which is also included in the Heritage declaration. The park was initially built in the first half of the 17th century, as part of the royal recreational areas. Carlos III opened it up as public park a hundred years later. Aside from the obvious green areas, the park features fountains, palaces and sculptures. I walked past some of them. First I came across the fountain “of the turtles” Fuente de los Galápagos.

There is also a large pond, aptly called the big pond Estanque Grande del Retiro populated by carps, to whose side stands the monument to Alfonso XII – Monumento a Alfonso XII.

Nearby the pond stands the fountain called the artichoke fountain, Fuente de la alcachofa.

I walked to the fountain that depicts the fall of Lucifer from Heaven, Fuente del Ángel Caído. The fountain itself was built in order to exhibit the sculpture by Ricardo Bellve, who originally created it in plaster. The figure would then be cast in iron for the World Exhibit of 1878 in Paris, and eventually placed in the Retiro.

I strolled back towards one of my favourite points in the park, but that’s because I like iron-and-glass architecture – a little building called Palacio de Cristal, which has a small pond around.

Finally I headed over the little café where I had arranged to meet with Mr Adelstein. He arrived shortly after. He signed my book, but truth be told, I had also brought my first-edition copy, which happens to be full of post-its from the first time I read it. He was happy to sign that one too, and to my eternal mortification… he went over all the notes. I almost died right then and there. We chatted for a little, I gave him the violet candy and he had some umeboshi sweets for me too. I babbled that I was very happy that he had made some time for me, and he told me “but you were so polite on twitter and the publisher said no signatures!” and I kind of died again.

In the end, our meeting was only 15 minutes, but I have not felt so happy in a very long time – that he specifically took time felt amazing. We took pictures and even had a safe mask-hug. Afterwards I headed towards the nearest train station so I could be on my way before the afternoon rush came through, so that was it for the day.

Walking distance: 12.39 km

1st July 2021: Manatees are Zen (Faunia, Madrid, Spain)

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Madrid has two zoos, the traditional one which can be traced back to 1770, and a second one which opened in 2001. They actually belong to the same business group anyway so probably the whole point is just to charge more – and to expand the installations. They operate as independent entities. On the first of July, due to a number of circumstances coming together, I visited Faunia, the newer installation. The standard price for a ticket is around 28€ – but there are plenty of different discounts. I paid 18.90€ for a random Thursday discount that they’ve got.

Though it promotes itself as a “Nature Theme park”, Faunia is little more than a modern standard zoo. Of course, it is much better than the old zoos, and the animals are well-kept, an organisation in ecosystems or areas is not that much of a novelty any more. There are different areas: farm / petting zoo, night, lake, jungle, temperate forest, African forest, Australia…

Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), the largest lizard in the world, endemic to some Indonesian islands. They are venomous.
Tufted capuchin (Sapajus apella), an omnivorous primate from South America.
Red panda (Ailurus fulgens), an animal that is so different from everything else that it has its own family name all by itself. It is native to the Himalayas and the south west of China.
American flamingoes (Phoenicopterus ruber), long-legged wading birds famous for their pink colour that tend to live in flocks.
Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta), a group-forming species endemic to Madagascar. They are attitude-laden and fear-lacking little fellas who love to sunbathe.

Fennec fox (Vulpes zerda): a small fox with large ears which lives in the Sahara and the Sinai Peninsula.
Southern tamandua or lesser anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla), a species of anteater from the forests of South America and the Caribbean, which feeds on ants, termites and bees.
Kangaroo Rat (genus Dipodomys), tiny nocturnal rodents from North America that can jump over two metres
Butterflies – don’t expect me to be able to ID them, but my money is on Antiochus Longwing, a south American small butterfly
Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus), a found in marshes, rivers and lakes in throughout sub-Saharan Africa. They are opportunistic and aggressive predators which ambush their prey in or near the water. And they can gallop. Look that up.

Arapaima (Sudis gigas), a giant fish native to the Amazon. They eat smaller fish, crustaceans, fruits, seeds, insects and any small land animal that they can catch on shore. Furthermore, this is an air-breather. It is a top predator that can become invasive if placed somewhere else.
Redtail catfish (Phractocephalus hemioliopterus), another carnivorous fish from the Amazon. Never trust a catfish, they can literally eat you by accident (or on purpose).
Caiman (family Alligatoridae), reptile predators originating in South America. They are large and aggressive, but they tend to hut fish. Did you know that
Penguins (family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. Most live in the Southern Hemisphere, and they feed on krill, fish, squid and so on that they catch underwater. Contrary to the myth, not all penguins live in the cold, a lot of them live in temperate climates.
Coral reef, with clownfish (family Pomacentridae) and sea anemones (order Actiniaria) living in symbiosis.

Meerkat (Suricata suricatta) aka Timon from the Lion King.
Red-necked wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus), similar to but smaller than a kangaroo, and also friendlier. They, of course, originate from Australia. The Faunia webpage says that you can go into the pen and walk among them, but I didn’t try.
Yellow-banded poison dart frog (Dendrobates leucomelas). It is an amphibian which lives in the humid areas in the north of South American. They secrete toxins from their skin. Do not pet, much less lick.
Blue viper of the white-lipped island pit viper (Trimeresurus insularis). Beautiful, venomous, aggressive and feisty, this snake is originary from Indonesian islands.
Gaboon viper (Bitis gabonica), it is really there. It is another venomous snake, and it has the longest fangs among snakes. And yes, it is really there.

White-cheeked turaco (Menelikornis leucotis), originary from forest in the highland regions of Eastern Africa.
Grey crowned crane (Balearica regulorum), a large bird from Sub-Saharan Africa.
Roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), a wading bird from South America, with a very characteristic beak, hence the name
Macaws (genus Ara), endemic to Central and South America. They are “seed predators” which means they destroy the seeds to eat them
Scarlet ibises (Eudocimus ruber), another colourful bird whose original habitat is the coastal areas of South America. They use their long beaks to prove for food in mud or under plants – they eat a lot of small crustaceans, which gives them their particular colour

I guess it is worth a visit, but that’s just about it, if you consider it from a shallow point of view – because when you start getting deep into things, everything gets ridiculously expensive. Because the thing that does differentiate Faunia from other zoos is the fact that it offers “hands-on experiences.” Some of these are about 5 or 6€ and include a short talk inside one of the pens – such as “meeting” the pelicans or the penguins.

For example, the Pelican interaction consists in walking into the pen and seeing the birds from afar sitting on a bench while one caretaker explains basic biology facts and the other tries to get a pelican to eat trouts for a bit of a close-up “feeling”. Pelicans are large water birds spread all through the world but Antarctica. Their most important characteristic is the large throat pouch under their long beak, that they use to “fish” – they fill their pouch with a billful of water and keep whatever they can digest. Faunia has pink-backed pelicans (Pelecanus rufescens) great white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus)

There are however other more expensive interactions, on the range of 40 to 50€, and one of them is the one I did – the interaction with the Manatees. Faunia has three West Indian manatees of the Antillean subspecies (Trichechus manatus manatus). Manatees are aquatic mammals – they breathe air and they spend all of their lives in the water, either salt or freshwater in South America. They don’t have natural predators, so they lack predator-avoidance responses, which makes them very tame and friendly. Unfortunately, they are critically endangered in the wild, mostly due to human-related deaths: hunting, habitat destruction and collision with ships. As they are herbivorous, they eat fresh and saltwater algae and plants, they are sometimes called “sea cows”, and eat plants and algae – males are called bulls, females cows and babies calves. They are sturdy and they can weigh between 400 and 550 kg, measuring up to 3 m in length. They have a long spine with pectoral flippers that have five fingers, but no rear flippers. Their body ends in a paddle-shaped tail. The neck is not visible and the head is stocky. They don’t have ears, their eyes are small and their snout is short, with nostrils that can be closed when they are underwater. They have a prehensile lip that they use to gather food and for social communication and interaction.

And they are adorable.

The manatees in Faunia are named Bruno, Fiona and Pelusa (“Dustbunny”), with the latter being the two-year-old daughter of the other two, born in the park. They live in the tank located in “The Jungle” area (La Jungla), sharing their space with catfish, arapaima and pirapitinga (the good-rep fish in the piranha family). For the interaction, you are asked to bring your bathing suit, towel and pool flip-flops. I arrived at the meeting point early and waited eagerly for the staff to come pick me up. Then I was guided into the inner area of the Jungle building, up a metal staircase and I changed into the neoprene suit.

As we waited for the other people to be collected, I saw the manatees swimming around, already anticipating the food. They had mulberry leaves, endives, and banana pieces for treats, and lettuce of different kinds as their main meals. The interaction itself is a kind of training for the animals. The trainers go in with an acoustic signal, and the animals recognise their own names, and each goes to the trainer assigned to them – you also get assigned a trainer so you don’t mess up.

There are two parts of the interaction. First, you get to feed “your” manatee whatever you are given. Normally, there are two people per manatee, but as this was in the middle of the week, even if in summer, we were lucky enough to only be three visitors – which meant your own personal manatee. Mine was Pelusa, the baby, and she was way more interested in the mulberry than the endives. During this part you keep your FFP mask on.

For the second part you “go down” with a snorkelling mask and even if you’re still on the platform you get to feed “whomever comes to you”, seeing the interaction from within the water. To finish up, you give your manatee a small branch for them to eat and play with, and they are released, you change back into your clothes and leave. My interaction took about one hour, and I was lucky enough that I had an “infiltrate” who took pictures from the “underwater tunnel” that crosses the tank. I also bought myself one of the official pictures that the resident photographer takes, because I really, really wanted a good picture.

All in all, it was awesome, and it even felt that the manatees came to wave bye-bye as I left through the tunnel.

As a zoo, as I mentioned, Faunia is a very standard one, with very few things that would make it special if not for the interactions. It could do with some more shades, because just after lunchtime it became really hot. Most food kiosk were closed due to COVID measures, and there were several vending machines. There were a lot of kids doing “urban camp” activities, and I got ran over twice – one of them pretty painfully to be honest.

Aside from the animals, there is a roller-coaster, also down due to COVID and a “dinosaur canyon” with dummies and animatronics that have really seen better days.

T-rex skeleton reconstruction

Furthermore, queuing to go in because the VIP entrance is blocked for… no really VIPs as there were none, and waiting forever at the entrance kiosk to get the Experience passes and then for the photos, were a drag. As a conclusion, going once in your lifetime, getting to do an interaction or two might be a good idea, but this is not somewhere I’m dying to come back to – though I am open to explore other parks from the same owner, such as the traditional zoo or the aquarium.

I mean, some of animals, such as this goose, had a very clear opinion about the park, too.

Goose attacking one of the Faunia signs

Walked distance: 12954 steps / 8.06 km

Pricing: Ticket: 18.90€ + Manatee experience 38.90€ + Pelican experience 5€ + Professional picture 11.90€ + digital upgrade (three-month access) 1€ = 75.70€. Way too much to plan another expedition any time soon.
Saved: We parked outside so we saved up the 5.50 € for the parking lot, and we took our own food.

19th June 2021: Dino World Expo in Madrid (Spain)

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Upon finding that the exhibit Dino World Expo was opening in Madrid on the 18th, I decided to book myself a ticket for the first pass on Saturday morning, 10 AM. I guessed that it would not be too full since it was the first weekend, early, and before school was out for the summer and all the reviews popped up so everyone found about it and brought their kids.

The exhibit was held in Madrid’s fair grounds, IFEMA Espacio 5.1, a short drive away, and aside a small mishap with setting the Sat-Nav. When I arrived, about 15 minutes later there were about ten families with little kids. I walked around for a little and came back when the doors opened. There were several types of tickets, the basic one was 13.50€. The exhibit included an extra “Virtual Reality experience for 3€” (it was 4€ if you bought it during the exhibit itself), so I decided to get the “premium entry ticket” which for 23.50€ included entry, a printed picture (10€ otherwise), the VR experience, a lanyard and a poster – both of which have been distributed around kids who might have want them.

When my ticket was scanned, the system roared and I was given my “VIP lanyard”, and told that I just had to show it around. Then again, let me tell you that I almost called this post “normalise people doing stuff alone” but that would go into the ranting territory and I did not want to do that – it is enough to say that from the beginning to the end of this exhibit, every staff member gaped at me for being in a dinosaur exhibition alone / without kids.

Upon entrance I got my picture taken, then had to wait a little with a couple of families before me until the first room cleared. We got an explanation about the audio-guide app and the exhibit rules. The exhibition itself was composed mostly of animatronics that moved and roared – when they had remembered to turn them on, some of them were still asleep. Aside from the life-sized animatronics, there was a CGI film and at the end of it, the VR experience which… was okay I guess. I learnt that I am not a VR person, as I got more than a bit queasy from the “flying” with the pterodactyl, swimming with a few anachronic species, and then following the T-Rex hunting.

From the shop I got my picture and the promised poster, although I had to show my ticket, not only the pass, in order to do so. All in all it was a cute little experience, but not really worth a detour if you are not in the area – one day I’ll learn that “for all the family” means “kid-oriented”, but that day was not today. On the way back the Sat-Nav got me confused and I took the wrong exit (“stay left on exit 9A” is not the same as “take exit 9A and then 9B to the left” in my books), but I was home by noon, and of course I took a lot of pictures.

Approach

Entrance

dinosaur animatronics: diplodocus

dinosaur animatronics: carnotasaurus and brontosaurus

dinosaur animatronics: pteranodoon

dinosaur animatronics: iguanodoon and Eustreptospondylus

dinosaur animatronics: feathered dinos

dinosaur animatronics: T-rex and triceratops

30th July 2020: Vampires in Madrid (Spain)

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The world is pretty much topsy-turvy these days, isn’t it? I’ve been literally staring at the computer screen for about an hour, wondering how to start, how to explain. I’ve erased the opening paragraph about four times too (≧▽≦). Thus, I will just spare you the introduction, explanations, justifications, and so. It took me a while to decide in favour of my little trip to Madrid.

Vampires, the Evolution of the Myth, or Vampiros, la Evolución del Mito (#VampirosCaixaForum) was scheduled before the whole COVID-19 debacle. Once things started opening up in Spain, the exhibition was rescheduled to run in Madrid for a couple of months through summer. And for a while I pondered whether it was… I’m not sure how to put it… worth the risk? For months we had been told to avoid public transport, which is my main mean of moving around, so in the end I decided what the fuck, if I was doing this, I was going to drive into the centre of Madrid – for the very first time in my life. For the record I don’t particularly enjoy driving, I much prefer being driven, and my sense of directions when driving is… not the best, so I borrowed a GPS, picked up my sister, and drove off.

After only getting the wrong exit once, we left the car in an underground parking lot and walked ten short minutes and we were in front of the Caixa Forum Madrid. Caixa Forum is a cultural space owned by a savings bank in search of tax deductions that organises shows and exhibitions. We had a compound ticket for 12:00, which included both exhibitions in the building, and a theme lunch. And so we went.

Vampiros: La Evolución del Mito, “Vampires, the Evolution of the Myth” is an exhibition originally organised by La Cinémathèque française, which is a French French non-profit film organisation that holds one of the collection of cinema-related objects and documents in the world. As they are specialised in films, the vampire exhibition focuses on the figure of the preternatural being throughout cinema.

The first room is focused on the book Dracula, and the Romantic interpretation of the myth – Romantic as the literary period, not the lovey-dovey stuff. Highlights include a facsimile of the first scene of the manuscript of Bram Stoker’s version of Dracula for theatre, aside from early editions of the novel and other vampire books such as John William Polidori’s The Vampyre and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. There were also some surprising items – some of Francisco de Goya’s wood-prints. Goya was one of the most influential painters in Spain, also grounded in the Romantic movement. Good stuff.

The second room was dedicated to Nosferatu, one of the key films in the vampire genre, with some promotional material and film props – this was the ward with best and most important number of items.

The following room was dedicated to the romantic, erotic and sexual vampires. It had two main focuses – one was the Dracula portrayed by Bela Lugosi as the epitome of the elegant, seductive vampire, first in Broadway, then in the 1931 film by Universal Studios. The centrepiece of the room featured two pieces of the wardrobe in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula worn by Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, along with several designs for the wardrobe (which could not be photographed, but you can peek at in some of the pics). Finally, we got to see the suit worn Tom Cruise as Lestat and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia in the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire. I missed some more Christopher Lee, as there were barely some photographies of his performance in Dracula (1958) and its sequels.

On one side there was a small area dedicated to the vampire as a political metaphor. The final area was dedicated to the pop vampire, including magazines, comics and graphic novels, some Japanese manga, and so on – even Count Dracula from Sesame Street! Then again, he was on a screen. I would have killed to see the real puppet.

All in all I got the impression that the exhibit lacked ‘the real thing’ and abused the film montages. I was expecting a few more props and less bits of films which… after all I’ve seen most (≧▽≦). The truth is that the myth of the vampire starts much earlier than the “Medieval” vampire featured in the Romantic fantasies, and can be traced to early succubi or the Lamia myths in Ancient Greece if you think about Western Culture alone. The Romantic and Victorian writers just made the myth cool as it was once more popular due to a sort of “vampire hysteria” that crossed the Balkans the previous century – that’s probably the main reason why Bram Stoker chose the figure of a Transylvanian warlord to create his character. But in the end it was a good way to break the activity fast.

Then we moved on to the next exhibition, Cámara y ciudad. La vida urbana en la fotografía y el cine, “Camera and the city: urban life in photography and the cinema” which… was okay, I guess. I guess I’m not a photography / video kind of person (≧▽≦).

After perusing the shop for a while, we moved to the cafeteria, where a “theme menu” had been designed. Let me detail that for you:

  • El frenesí vampírico / Vampire frenzy: virgin – I think – Bloody Mary
  • Estacas de la muerte / Death stakes: aubergine tempura with sweet and sour sauce
  • Reencarnación / Reincarnation: Goat cheese, sweet beet and raspberries salad
  • Inmortalidad / Immortality: Macerated sea bass with lime, orange, coriander, salt and pepper, with a side of mango and tortilla chips
  • Embalsamamiento / Embalmment: Duck magret with a red wine sauce and mushrooms
  • Drácula / Dracula: Crème anglaise, jelly and raspberry mousse.

Let me tell you, this was amazing – and fortunately the portions were small so the final amount was more than adequate.

It was a little later than 15:15 when we left the CaixaForum centre and headed off the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, a museum built from a noble family’s art collection which also hosts temporary exhibitions. The permanent exhibition is chronologically organised, and here are some of the pieces by famous artists: Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Degas, El Greco, Tiziano… and hm… many very modern painters I… can’t understand.

Finally we decided to call it a day before people started coming out of work and leaving town so that we did not get into a traffic jam, and I am very proud of myself for taking the drive – which was my wee white whale for a while. I’ll see myself out now (≧▽≦)

Distance: Approx. 120 km driving; 6.08 km walking

Also, as an afterthought, I ordered the Vampire exhibition book online. I did not at first because I did not feel like carrying it around as it is thick. But they home-delivered and I actually saved 2.5 bucks?

PS: New logo! What do you think?

26th January 2020: Royal Palace and Norwegian salmon (Madrid, Spain)

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A friend was over visiting for the weekend and we headed off to Madrid. It had been raining and the weather the previous evening had been rather miserable. Actually, when we left home it was rather foggy and dark, but upon stepping out the Avenida de América bus station, it had become sunny and not cold at all.

My friend wanted to see the Palacio Real de Madrid, the Royal Palace – we had been playing Madrid Cluedo the day before and she had mentioned that she had never been there. At first, we only wanted to see building. As it was Chinese New Year, the blunt of tourists was somewhere else watching the Parade, and we had a short queue to go inside, so she decided to wait as it was not expensive, either.

You can’t take pictures in most of the palace, but the yard looked really nice and you could see the cathedral from there. We also heard all the bells tolling at noon, which was fun. When you go into the palace you see several rooms, including the throne room and the old sleeping quarters. One of my favourite rooms is the one with the Stradivarius violins and other instruments.

While there aren’t that many pictures taken inside, here is a shot of the cathedral, Catedral de la Almudena .

After visiting the Palacio Real, we went to have lunch. She wanted ham, and I wanted a poke bowl I had seen announced in El Corte Inglés cafeteria, so it was a win-win situation. I had a “Poke bowl de salmón noruego”, Norwegian salmon poke bowl that was amazing – a sushi rice base with avocado, spring onion, purple onion, wakame, a soft-boiled egg and Norgweian salmon marinated with soy sauce, rice vinegar and kimchi.

She declared that she was happy after this, so we called it a day.

26th May 2019: “Komeko Sin Gluten” event in Madrid (Spain)

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After almost literally everybody and their dogs ditched me for a cooking workshop in Madrid, literally the day before I decided to bite the bullet and go by myself, so I bought my ticket on Saturday night, barely 12 hours before the event, a promotion of a Japanese-Spanish shop and its products based on rice flour. The shop is called “Komeko Sin Gluten”, which translates as “Gluten-Free Rice Flour”.

Evenbrite ticket for the event: Taller de Cocina de Komeko: crepe, helado y tarta 10 euro

The event happened in a venue-for-hire in Madrid, and consisted in three distinct parts: a small market in which I would have spent a lot if I had not got a few samples with my ticket, a cooking workshop and a taiko concert. I arrived early due to Sunday having awful public-transport connections, and I arrived in Madrid an hour before the event even opened, and then we got a delay with the start of the workshop because someone was missing. During that time I got to sit around among aaaall the Japanese people around, including the head drummer of the taiko group, , whom I admired a lot since I watched him in HA·YA·TO: Drum Masters.

The small market was comprised, of course, of gluten-free products, especially Japanese ones, most of them can be found online, yay. I decided not to buy things upfront as the workshop included a sample of products, and I wanted to buy what I did not get. In the end, I did not have to buy anything because I got next to everything!

Pictures of the rice flour items - flour, noodles, snacks...

Anyway, the cooking workshop:

  1. Komeko crêpes: We made the crêpes on portable pans. There was a mini drama as the cook refused to start until we had chopsticks to flip the crêpes, and I was amused at first until I realised how convenient they actually were. While he was worried that I ahd any problems with the chopsticks, I’m happy to report that I was not the clumsiest in the class! After they were cool, we filled one up with ‘pastry cream’, banana and whipped cream for presentation – but we got to take the rest home and I tried them with chocolate. Serious improvement!
  2. Steamed banana sponge cake: this was really interesting to make, and also really easy – it involved mixing all the ingredients in a plastic bag, and then cutting a corner off the bag to pour that into little trays so we could steam it. That was… neat, and a team effort.
  3. Japanese green tea (matcha) ice-cream: Double team effort! (≧▽≦). As the paste needed time to freeze, we actually observed the chef prepare the ingredients and ate the one that had been prepared in the previous workshop.

Collage. Chef preparing crepes, and a picture of the materials, the matcha ice cream and my own creppes and banana spongecake

We had a snack with our crêpes and the matcha ice-cream. Then we got the haul of goodies: ramen and spaghetti noodles, komeko, komeko with glutinous rice, and komeko with cocoa, well worth the price (10€) I had paid for the whole workshop… Talk about promotion ☆⌒(ゝ。∂).

Different flours and noodles I got as present

Afterwards, I headed downstairs for the taiko concert. Enishi Taiko is a Spanish group, and Keita Kanazashi usually collaborates with them rather often. The concert was, of course, more humble than the one with HA·YA·TO, but it was still a lot of fun.

Taiko group playing and having a lot of fun

Afterwards, I got Kanazashi to sign the HA·YA·TO DVD and the picture I had with him from that time, which was really cool. Furthermore, the main drummer in Enishi Taiko remembered me from the X Gran Exposición de Ikebana y Semana Cultural Japonesa session, and another session I took at their headquarters.

I had thought that I would be eating in Madrid but as I had snacked on the komeko products I was not hungry at all, so I decided to head home. On the way towards the station I found this really cool fountain.

Urban waterfall. The fountain looks like a massive bench, with a thin layer of water dripping from the top