Doors of Madrid

Whoa... I have been to Wales (which was great) and am soon to go to Switzerland (which I'm looking forward to) and I haven't told you about Madrid yet.    After that I'm hoping to have some "open" time here in London.    There are many things to do and many things I want to write. 

Today I did something that I found very interesting.  I interviewed the daughter of Ramses Wissa Wassef, since she happened to be visiting..  I didn't  write much about Ramses Wissa Wassef Centre in Egypt when I visited it earlier this year, even though it was one of the highlights of my visit.  At the centre, local villagers produce, among other things, large and amazing tapestries which they weave from their imaginations, without planning or preliminary sketches.   Here's a photo of just a part of one tapestry. The amount of detail and the subtle hand dyed colours and the sheer size of some of the tapestries, mean that I can spend hours just looking. 

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 Ramses Wissa Wassef, who died in 1974,  had extraordinary creative gifts and original ideas, and so I was excited to talk to his daughter. I felt so glad that my work gives me the chance to talk to such interesting people from time to time and hope I get the chance to write the piece, which is at present half commissioned. That is, the editor has said she really wants it but needs to find a place in her schedule.  .If it doesn't work out, I will try to sell it elsewhere. 

Not that this has anything to do with Madrid.  

Anyway I had managed to visit Spain many times without ever making it to Madrid, and when I finally got there last month, I loved it.  One of the things I noticed was the great variety of doors and facades in the city.  It's always fun looking at different doors, windows and shop fronts in cities, but Madrid's little back streets seemed specially full of surprises. I liked how so many shop or restaurant owners had painted over the shutters that covered their facades when the premises were closed. 

Some of the images were very striking, though I'm not sure that this one would REALLY entice me to eat in this restaurant..... 

Although thei restaurant below has a tiled facade (tiles are popular in Spain), the decorations are in fact painted on and show famous Spanish buildings and landscapes. I think now that I should have gone in to try the place, even if only to see what the decor was like inside. But I wasn't hungry at the time. 

The door below, white with brass decoration and an intriguing interior, has the kind of bold, proud appearance I always associate with Spanish design.  You just would never find an exterior door like this in London, and and it looks like a palace - yet it was just in some side street. 

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This, by contrast, could be found in many a city. It's the door of a little theatre and I liked the poster, which seemed to bring it alive. 

Many of the old doors are covered in graffiti. You might not like graffiti, but I thought some of it was pretty striking, like this door covered in gold and silver. 

Sometimes beggars sit at the doors of churches.  Here is the door of an old church not far from the centre. If the figure in the foreground doesn't seem that realistic to you, that's because it's a bronze statue of a young woman. I have a soft spot for statues which look as if they are doing everyday things - sitting on benches, leaning over walls, or, as in this case, walking along the street. 

I thought Madrid had some  funky little bars,  and "Tupperware," in Malasañais is quite well known.   There's nothing like a bit of 1960s psychedelia for brightening up the street. 

My hotel was the Vincci Via 66 on Gran Via, right in the centre of things.  Its decor featured twisty mirrors on the shiny black doors, a bit like distorting mirrors in a fairground. And there were silver armchairs in the rooms... and other strange things.  The overall effect was attractive, though odd, and I always looked forward to coming back to the hotel. 

And one day I noticed I had accidentally worn clothes that matched the decor.