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Thursday, February 28, 2002 This city: a fine combination of beautiful, quirky, hilarious. Went to a late lunch at a cafetería I tried once before. El Cañizo -- a joint on Fuencarral, one of the barrio's main drags. You glance in the front windows, you walk into the front room, you find a perfectly respectable-looking tapas bar/cafetería. But walk through the front room and down a hallway, you find yourself somewhere else altogether. We're talking a couple of dining rooms -- one small, one large -- filled with nicely set tables. Walls mostly marble except for one long expanse of floor to ceiling wood paneling which manages, in some intangible way, to toss a monkey wrench into the rarified atmosphere the marble tries to generate. Some vaguely kinda faux art deco wall-mounted lamps are scattered around, along with numerous examples of the tackiest paintings this side of a 1950's Holiday Inn, each painting with its very own illumination lamp mounted above the frame. An amazing combo of looks is at work in these rooms. As if whoever threw it all together aspired to some nebulous image of classic Viennese refinement but couldn't rid the place of some serious cinderblock VFW Hall ambience. From there I wandered up Fuencarral toward Tribunal, intending to check out el Museo Municipal (the municipal museum -- a nearly 300-year-old building, originally a hospice) -- a lovely old edifice whose entrance is framed by an gigantic, unbelievably ornate facade. Located in a part of town that is completely overrun by hordes of drinking, partying youths on weekend nights, and though I've passed the place many times, for some reason it never occurred to me to investigate. Something about the sprawling weekend crowds of shouting, shitfaced teens and 20-somethings. Until something I recently read about it piqued my curiosity. The museum concerns itself with Madrid, essentially from the 1600's on. Many large paintings by less than stellar artists, often anonymous, and a smaller number of paintings by genuinely accomplished artists. Lots of beautifully-preserved old furniture. But nothing too exciting until the timeline rolls into the 1800's. At which point many large paintings concern themselves with the uprising against the Napoleonic occupation, and things get a bit livelier. There's also a model of the city, created over the course of 22 or so months around 1830, which occupies an entire room. Worth a long, leisurely look. On the way out I happened to notice the door that led to the gift shop and stepped inside to find the greatest collection of Madrid-oriented consumables that I've come across in my time here -– books, postcards, gifts, spanning the spectrum from the tacky to the sublime. A bonanza, a genuine find. A month from tomorrow I'll be heading back to the States. Changes are in the works. rws 12:48 PM [+]
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