Friday, May 27, 2016

Museum Time

Madrid, Spain -- Day 3

Today was another stunningly, beautiful day in Madrid.  We roused the kids a bit earlier than yesterday (10 AM) and once more headed out to the plaza across the main, La Gran Via thoroughfare, for breakfast.  

Clearly, Europeans are much thinner, not only because they walk a ton more, but because the portions are tiny.  The tacos and quesadillas we had yesterday were great, but only about 4 inches in diameter.  Back home, a quesadilla would be four times that size... and it’s not necessarily any less expensive.  I’d say food prices are pretty similar to California with the current 1.15 dollar to euro exchange rate.
Our goal today was visiting the Thyssen Bornemisze museum.  
The special exhibition displaying works of local realist painters was awesome.  We sprung for the handheld audio guides, which we regretted not paying for at the Royal Palace yesterday.  The realist paintings were created by a small group of Madrid artists from the mid 60’s to the present – Antonio Lopez, Isabel Quintanilla and others.  Some of the paintings and pencil drawings were almost photorealistic.  We all really enjoyed it.  Dex, in particular, really wanted a poster of the Garden (Jardin) by Isabel, but we decided to defer the purchase until we're back home. 

During lunch I attempted to interest the kids with “30 facts about Spain” that I found on line.  They were happy about the food, but only mildly impressed with the trivia.  


My lunch
Speaking of which, I don’t know how you’d travel these days without a smartphone.  Thank goodness we switched to T-Mobile before we left.  So far, it’s been working without a hitch, even if it’s a bit slow from time to time. We spent another couple hours browsing the amazing collection of European art: mid 17th and 18th-century Dutch portraits and landscape paintings, French Impressionist works, Cubist and abstract art and more.  

I was interested to see the Salvador Dali’s painting “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking,” a copy of which I’d just been perusing in Tacoma at Wen's friend, Julie’s, house. A bit of a bizarre painting (hey, it's a Dali), but pretty cool to see the real thing.
The rest of the late afternoon was spent at the Parque Retiro again.  For 6 euros we rented a rowboat on the lake and let Dex and Kylie attempt to keep us going in a straight line. 


Afterwards, while they ran off to the play structure and attempted to make friends (“Puedo jugar contigo?”), I took a run around the park and Meg checked Facebook and email. I’m hoping to develop strategic callouses so running in my sandals won’t hurt so much later.

After a couple hours cooped up in the room doing math homework and journal entries, we headed out for a walk around the nearby streets.  It’s great that it only gets dark around 10:00.  Since it was Friday night, things were really hopping.  There are an amazing array of tiny restaurants, bars, and bakeries within a few blocks of the pension and a bunch of walking streets; that combined with the beautiful weather made for a nice evening stroll.


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