Madrid Days 1 & 2

Hola! Buenos Dias! Gracias!

That's all the Spanish I've learned in nearly a week in Spain...and everyone seems to say valle (sp?) a lot, which I think means 'okay'...

So anyway, I arrived in Madrid yesterday. The weather hasn't been as good as in Barcelona, but it's only actually rained for a couple of hours and (thank god for my acclimatization in Switzerland) I haven't found it that cold, even though the locals are bundled up like Christmas is next week. On day one, I had the afternoon to kill, so I made my way over to Paseo del Prado to the Museo del Prado--one of the largest exhibitions of Spanish, as well as European, art. Lots of Goya and Velasquez here. It was a lovely museum, but to be honest I quickly get tired of looking at picture after picture of Jesus at various points in his life, or the Virgin Mary, or, for a little variety, some saints I know nothing about. I think maybe if I knew more about it all--what the imagery means, how the styles evolved, I might enjoy it more. As it is, it all looks the same to me. So after that I headed over to the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia--Madrid's modern art museum. I enjoyed this one a lot, though modern art does tend to be touch and go with me. Often it appears to me that it's people with no talent who have let their wild imaginings run away and called anything that pops into their head art. There was an exhibition involving recordings of everyday conversations coming from inside bottles of cleaning supplies. It was in Spanish, so the effect was really lost on me. Going back a few days, in Barcelona I went to a really great modern art museum--one of the first that I've really enjoyed and been drawn to a good portion of the works. It was mostly stuff done between the late 1940s and late 1970s, and the artists seemed to actually have well-developed artistic talent. That said, the Reina Sofia was really nice, and I want to go back because I wasn't able to see a big piece by Picasso that they have.

So that was it for yesterday. This morning, I got up and did a tour of all of the major attractions of Madrid. The Palacio Real was beautiful, as was the Catedral de la Almudena next to it--the cathedral had some really interesting stained glass windows, almost modernist, as if Picasso designed them. Then I moved on to the Plaza Mayor, and over to the Parque de El Retiro. The park was gorgeous; it's enormous, with tons of fountains and kind of lanes running through it with overgrown trees that make you feel like you're in a forest alone rather than a public park in the middle of a capital city. Oddly enough, there is also the only statue of Satan in a public space--it's beautifully done, and kind of sad. So I wandered through the park a bit--I was unimporessed by the 2 ¨palaces¨in it, which were more like small conservatories built for one of the past kings for when he wanted to wander through the park too. Then I moved on to the Puerta de Alcala--one of the historical gates to the city--and on to Plaza de Santa Ana, which is apparently where all of the people would hang out post-bullfight to discuss the days events. Earnest Hemingway also liked to get drunk there...awesome...

And thus ended my second day in Madrid. I'm going to go out shortly for some tapas and a drink, then maybe try to see a flamenco show tonight. Probably early to bed, though--all this adventuring is exhausting!