Madrid Travel Guide
11/09/2007 at 3:15 PM
Tags: Fall-Culture-Travel-Map, Museums, Art, Europe Travel (all tags)
Our Fall Culture Travel Map can get you to the good museums.
And here we thought Goya just made delicious black beans and pastel colored sodas that taste like cartoons. Apparently Goya also makes masterworks of 19th century Neo-classicist portraiture, hung not in the aisles of your local bodega but in the newly renovated halls of Madrid's Prado Museum.
This Fall the Prado is pulling the classics out of storage to fill their new wing with little-seen examples of 19th Century Spanish art. Hidden from the public eye, these paintings and sculptures have been the subject of many years of research and restoration and will also be featured in an exhaustive catalog of the Prado's collection. Titled A Collection Rediscovered, this exhibition takes the viewer through the years that separate Francisco de Goya from Pablo Picasso.
The exhibition runs until April 24 with a concert on November 16 and a screening on the 17 that both explore themes of 19th Century Spanish art. Admission is relatively cheap (about $9) but bring whatever special ID (student, teacher, AARP?) you have lying around to drop the price through the Prado's liberal discount admissions policy.
Related Links:
· The 19th Century in the Prado [Official Site]
· Fall Culture Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Fall Culture Travel Map [Jaunted]
[Photo: Lanpernas 2.1]
by Judson
10/26/2007 at 10:20 AM
Tags: Fall-Culture-Travel-Map, Festivals, Fall Festivals (all tags)
You don't have to stay at home just because the leaves are changing. Follow along on our Fall Culture Map to discover what's happening this autumn.
While Americans fawn over events dedicated to cookie jars, butter sculptures and the art of sausage-making, a European festival needs some heft in order to distinguish itself in the culture glut of The Old World. Luckily Festival de Otoño (Autumn Festival) in Madrid has the stats to set it above the rest.
For five weeks every autumn, invited companies take the stage daily and nightly. This year's shows include 73 theatre, 21 dance, 13 music and 39 circus performances. The 28 international productions hail from world-renowned companies from a host of European countries, the United States, South America and Asia. To find that kind of diversity stateside, you'd have to ride "It's a Small World" at Disneyland.
La Comédie-Française, which claims the title of the western world's oldest theater company, just wrapped the first Spanish performance of Molière's Le Misanthrope. And while it's too late to catch the French comedy of manners, ¡Piratas, Piratas! might be more fun anyway: 60 acrobats from Mongolia, Russia, India, Malaysia and China flip and fly in a Cirque-like battle between good and bad pirates.
Now in its 24th year, the Autumn Festival started October 15 and lasts until November 18.
Related Stories:
· Festival de Otoño [Official Site]
· Fall Culture Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Fall Culture Travel Map [Jaunted]
by ced138
6/18/2007 at 9:22 AM
Tags: Celeb Travel, Spain Travel (all tags)
Forget America's favorite pastime. You want to roll with the Beckhams, you'd better enjoy the world's game -- soccer! Or as they prefer to call it, football. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes jetted off to Madrid this weekend to see David Beckham play in his final game for Spanish team Real Madrid. (As true footie fans know, Beckham was signed to the L.A. Galaxy earlier this year, making him basically the only star of his stature playing in the U.S. MLS league.) Victoria Beckham and the kids sat in the stands explaining to TomKat why there aren't any cheerleaders.
Real Madrid won the championship, but David Beckham was taken off the field (perhaps in retaliation of his transfer). Of course, the best way to see el Bernabeu, for the first OR last time, is when it's packed with screaming fans singing profane songs and waving HALAMADRID scarves. But if you can't, the stadium is open from 10 to 6 daily for tours -- and at two blocks up the metro, it's an easy addition to your Madrid itinerary.
Related Stories:
· Madrid Travel [Jaunted]
· Hotels in Madrid [HotelChatter]
[Photo: JustJared]
by egw
3/14/2007 at 2:40 PM
Tags: Public Transportation, Public Transportation Love-Hate, Television (all tags)
Jaunted is in the midst of a public transportation festival. Join us in celebrating the ultimate travel tool: a cheap way to get around. Share your stories in the comments or by emailing us at tips [at] jaunted [dot] com.In most cities the public transit system is like a skeleton: It's always there, and more noticed in its absence than in regular operation. Perhaps the city of Madrid was hoping to save its cheap, clean subway system from such a fate when the local Telemadrid television station created
"Metro a Metro," a game show that makes the metro system its playing board.
The game starts with four players racing to get to one pre-determined metro stop by answering trivia questions. The furthest away is eliminated, and then the map changes and they're racing to a different stop. In the finale, participants go head-to-head to answer 15 trivia questions in a minute. "Metro a Metro" loved to ask about the often obscure names of the subway stops; it's from there that I learned my own stop, Islas Filipinas, was named in honor of an ambassadorial visit. Sometimes co-host Carla Hidalgo would shoot live footage around Madrid for the questions.
When I lived in Madrid I used to come home every day after class and watch "Metro a Metro" with my host dad, a guy who knew pretty much all the answers. My only chance was with the pop culture questions, and then only when I could translate them fast enough. I used the Metro constantly, even though it closed during the all-important party hours between 2 and 6 a.m.; it had just been spiffed up for the city's bid to host the 2010 Olympics (it lost, sadly). You can even take it directly to the airport -- hear that, New York? Too bad no cunning producer has picked it up for an American version (say, "Subway to Subway" on NY1?) yet. Watch "Metro a Metro" five days a week at 7:30 p.m. in Madrid and the suburbs.
[Photo:
dcols]
by egw
5/04/2006 at 11:35 AM
Tags: Food, Spain (all tags)
Ferrán Adria may be the chef of El Bulli, the
top-ranked restaurant in Europe by quite a few different tallies, but that isn't stopping the man from bringing edible sea foam to the world of fast food in Madrid. He's
just opened the second branch of his takeaway joint,
Fast Good, in Madrid. A brave name for a restaurant, even one by a Michelin chef with three stars to his name.
The menu looks to be a mix of lunchtime staples; hamburgers, salads, even bocadillo sandwiches made with high-end pata negra ham. Unlike many chains, which replicate their menu everywhere, the menu here changes quite often; we'll see if customers get frustrated at not having permanent access to their favorites over time.
The chain seems to be doing well: branches are planned for Barcelona, Valencia, and Las Palmas. Sure beats Arby's, doesn't it?
[Image via damdam/Flickr]
Related Stories:·
Cityscape [Wallpaper*]
·
El Bulli Still the Best [Jaunted]
by AVB
2/14/2006 at 10:50 AM
Tags: Design (all tags)
Monster coverage of the NAT/T4 Terminal in Madrid! Monster coverage because the terminal itself is mammoth: $1.2 Billion dollars for the buildings alone, 9,000 parking spaces in the parking garage, and 174 check-in desks.
The question remains, to what end? Is design simply the new camouflage to help push through municipal boondoggles?
Barajas' terminal is a gigantic project, based on huge projected increased in passenger traffic: From 48 million passengers a year to 70 million. It's hard to believe that 22 million additional passengers will now want to fly via Madrid to see a bamboo roof and avoid harsh fluorescent lighting. Everyone can benefit from good lighting, sure, but many Americans fly in their pyjamas. It's hard to see them making bulb-based travel decisions.
Still, a snazzy new airport is a better civic investment than the Olympics. We'd trade Bode Miller for Jean Nouvel or Frank Gehry any day.
[Image via txmx.2/Flickr]
Related Stories:·
Spanish Fly [Jaunted]
·
Jumbo Proportions [The Guardian]
·
Best Public Space 2006 [Travel + Leisure, now online]
by AVB
2/13/2006 at 10:00 AM
Tags: Design (all tags)
When is an airport more than an airport? When it's a design-award winning airport, of course. Check that, a
multiple design award-winning airport. Where, oh where, is this oasis of beauty in a world still beholden to industrial grey carpeting and the cherry-scented cleanser?
Where else but Spain? It's none other than the new terminal in Madrid's Barajas Airport, T4 or NAT, depending on who you ask. Already a winner of a
Wallpaper* design award, it was named this week (alas, not yet online, but on newsstands now!) as the Best Public Space by Travel and Leisure's Design Award Jury for 2006.
So what if it's a fifteen-minute ride from the other terminals? All the more time to enjoy the sunny interior and undulating (everyone's new favorite design word) bamboo roof. Plus, thanks to those skylights there's not a fluorescent bulb to be found. That's super soothing, sure, but the best element of the design is the abscence of the TSA inside the walls of the terminal. Now that's innovation.
[Image via BioMaxi/Flickr]
Related Stories:·
Best New Airport [Wallpaper*]
by AVB
1/19/2006 at 12:00 PM
Tags: Art (all tags)
How do you lose a 38-ton sculpture? It's not impossible if it's been put in the metaphorical back of the closet. Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum can't find a steel work by Richard Serra that it bought for around $220,000 back in 1986. When the museum director recently decided to get the thing out of the warehouse recently, it couldn't be found. The storage company who had it since 1990 has since gone out of business, so this could be tricky. . . .
Related Stories:
·
Spanish Museum Has Lost a 38-Ton Serra Sculpture [Artinfo, via
Modern Art Notes]
·
Reina Sofia [Official site]
·
'Que Serra?' says museum [Scotsman]
by johnrambow
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