Lady in Madrid in London
Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009
With the credit crunch in full swing and corporate bigwigs getting in trouble for overly-lavish vacations, this week I decided to bring my foreign holiday to me. How did I do it? I went to Madrid without leaving central London.
A business contact of mine invited me to an event at the Victoria & Albert Museum called "Now Madrid: The Christmas City". The event was sponsored by the City Council of Madrid and Madrid's fashion industry, and was intended to showcase Spain's capital and the spring and summer 2009 collections from Spain's top fashion designers.
The V&A is my favorite London museum, so I was excited to visit after hours for a special event. As my boyfriend is in San Francisco for the week, I headed to South Ken on Monday night with a friend to experience the best of Madrid in the best of London.
We entered the museum and walked into the Dome, which normally houses the ticket counter and a large Chihuly sculpture hanging from the ceiling. On this particular evening, however, the ticket counter oval had been transformed into an open bar and the normally-bright Dome area was dimly lit with pink spotlights. All around the usually-empty walls were mannequins sporting the latest designs from Madrid's fashion industry.
After the reception and a short film extolling Madrid as the perfect place to spend Christmas, we left the Dome and walked through a wing of the museum to get to our next venue. As I walked through the long, dark corridors, I was amazed to see the galleries after hours, without tourists and spotlights. It was so quiet and empty that I felt like I was intruding on the private life of the centuries-old armor and furniture of former monarchs.
At the end of the narrow, dark halls we descended a staircase into the massive Raphael Gallery, one of my favorite rooms in the V&A. A cavernous space, the gallery is famous for the artist's seven enormous Biblical cartoons that are considered to be some of the most important Renaissance art in the world. Last time I was in the gallery it was full of rowdy English school children drawing their interpretations of Raphael's work. This time was quite a bit different.
Like the Dome, the Raphael Gallery was dimly lit with pink light. In the center of the room grew a line of huge metal trees, each of which had small television screens on the ends of its branches. Mannequins dressed in the spring and summer 2009 collections stood at attention beneath the foliage, and the whole scene had an enchanted air about it.
Sergi Arola, Spain's most famous chef after Ferrán Adriá of El Bulli, was flown to London to cater the event. As we stood admiring the cartoons, tray after tray of tapas made their way toward us. We enjoyed tempura pistachios, jamon iberico, pork croquettes, gambas al ajillo, sardines and caviar on toast, oysters in Sherry escabeche, foie gras with tomato chutney and vanilla-scented nuts, smoked Bacalao, and goat cheese gnocchi with tomatoes. For dessert we were offered chocolate and saffron cremoso and orange cream tartlets.
At 11pm, the catering staff brought around martini glasses with 12 grapes inside. Each guest was instructed to take one. The emcee of the evening picked up her microphone and told us that there was a Spanish tradition of eating grapes on New Year's Eve. As a faux clock struck "midnight", she told us to eat one grape every second. I gave up after one grape.
The evening culminated with my friend and I going out in South Ken with some new Spanish acquaintances that had flown in for the day from Madrid. It being a Monday night, there wasn't much going on in London. I'm sure that if we had actually been in Madrid there would have been some better nightlife options. Alas, bringing my vacation destinations to London will only get me so far.
A business contact of mine invited me to an event at the Victoria & Albert Museum called "Now Madrid: The Christmas City". The event was sponsored by the City Council of Madrid and Madrid's fashion industry, and was intended to showcase Spain's capital and the spring and summer 2009 collections from Spain's top fashion designers.
The V&A is my favorite London museum, so I was excited to visit after hours for a special event. As my boyfriend is in San Francisco for the week, I headed to South Ken on Monday night with a friend to experience the best of Madrid in the best of London.
We entered the museum and walked into the Dome, which normally houses the ticket counter and a large Chihuly sculpture hanging from the ceiling. On this particular evening, however, the ticket counter oval had been transformed into an open bar and the normally-bright Dome area was dimly lit with pink spotlights. All around the usually-empty walls were mannequins sporting the latest designs from Madrid's fashion industry.
After the reception and a short film extolling Madrid as the perfect place to spend Christmas, we left the Dome and walked through a wing of the museum to get to our next venue. As I walked through the long, dark corridors, I was amazed to see the galleries after hours, without tourists and spotlights. It was so quiet and empty that I felt like I was intruding on the private life of the centuries-old armor and furniture of former monarchs.
At the end of the narrow, dark halls we descended a staircase into the massive Raphael Gallery, one of my favorite rooms in the V&A. A cavernous space, the gallery is famous for the artist's seven enormous Biblical cartoons that are considered to be some of the most important Renaissance art in the world. Last time I was in the gallery it was full of rowdy English school children drawing their interpretations of Raphael's work. This time was quite a bit different.
Like the Dome, the Raphael Gallery was dimly lit with pink light. In the center of the room grew a line of huge metal trees, each of which had small television screens on the ends of its branches. Mannequins dressed in the spring and summer 2009 collections stood at attention beneath the foliage, and the whole scene had an enchanted air about it.
Sergi Arola, Spain's most famous chef after Ferrán Adriá of El Bulli, was flown to London to cater the event. As we stood admiring the cartoons, tray after tray of tapas made their way toward us. We enjoyed tempura pistachios, jamon iberico, pork croquettes, gambas al ajillo, sardines and caviar on toast, oysters in Sherry escabeche, foie gras with tomato chutney and vanilla-scented nuts, smoked Bacalao, and goat cheese gnocchi with tomatoes. For dessert we were offered chocolate and saffron cremoso and orange cream tartlets.
At 11pm, the catering staff brought around martini glasses with 12 grapes inside. Each guest was instructed to take one. The emcee of the evening picked up her microphone and told us that there was a Spanish tradition of eating grapes on New Year's Eve. As a faux clock struck "midnight", she told us to eat one grape every second. I gave up after one grape.
The evening culminated with my friend and I going out in South Ken with some new Spanish acquaintances that had flown in for the day from Madrid. It being a Monday night, there wasn't much going on in London. I'm sure that if we had actually been in Madrid there would have been some better nightlife options. Alas, bringing my vacation destinations to London will only get me so far.
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