Madrid Addendum

A gentle reader reminds me that perhaps there is too much emphasis on food and wine and not enough space dedicated to culture, museums and architecture. Therefore, let me write just a little bit about some wonderful museums we discovered in Madrid and Malaga.

Both Madrid and Malaga have magnificent Museums of Jamon, in fact Madrid has four of them. These are tributes to the national delicacy of Spain, ham, not like the kind your mom might have served at Easter, but tasty, salty bits of the leg of a pig fed on acorns or corn. The hams hang like Spanish Moss on an old southern oak, drying in the open air of the museum with little cups stuck in the fleshy part of the leg to catch the fat as it drips and dries.

In Malaga, there is a quaint little museum completely devoted to the making and storing of Malaga Sweet Wine. While I'm not a fan of this, I do adore museums so we visited it during a long walk. Not far from this museum is one that is dedicated to the production of Gin, a drink quite favored in Spain. 

Seriously, we did visit some real museums, like the Temple of Debod in Madrid. This was an Egyptian temple that was built in 800 BC and stood in Aswan until they decided to flood the place. It was dismantled and shipped to Spain to honor the Spanish historian who did all the initial work on translating the text that is all over the Temple. They only allow 15 people inside at  a time in order to limit the CO2 because it is so small.  We also took the "Hop-on Hop-off" bus to all the famous places in Madrid:  the royal palace, the gardens, the cathedral, and the various plazas of Espana, Toledo and Sol. 

But museums and churches and galleries are the things you do when the weather is horrible, not when the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the gardens filled with color, as they were during our time in Spain. We did go to the botanical gardens of Malaga and enjoyed them, but there were other gardens that were right downtown and free, so why bother?!