A dose of culture

How to spend a day in Madrid before I fly off to Poland....that was the dilemma? !

It seems impossible to be in Madrid and not visit the Prado Museum as it has a reputation for being one of the best art collections in the world.

We were staying at a very nice (and surprisingly cheap) hotel near the airport so there was a bit of travel on the Metro to be sorted and a few changes which involved a lot of walking through the Metro stations enjoying the many buskers. From violinists to xylophone players,  there was plenty of choice, but I had to feel sorry for them as the commuters rushed past.

The Prado is in a huge old building with some new extensions and is enormous. We paid for a guide thinking it would be needed and it turned out to be a book weighing about a kilogram!  And all we really needed was a map and the audio guides ( rated as 9 as they were very good! ).

There are those who like to examine every artwork in detail and those who like to wander around until they find something they like and those who are very systematic about their approach to a collection ...and those who do a combination of all of those approaches. So Ewan and I decided to part company as we definitely don't enjoy viewing any collection the same way.

We arranged to meet in 2 hours and off we went.  There are certainly lots of old masterpieces but they aren't in any easy order that I could follow.  I did enjoy the beautiful sumptuous looking women in the Rubens paintings and the portraits by Rembrandt.  And they did have seats where I could ponder on a painting and, more importantly, rest my leg without looking ridiculous.

When I met Ewan at the appointed time he had given up and had a snooze,   overwhelmed by the number of portraits of wealthy sponsors and kings, and the huge number of religious paintings.  I had to agree and we were happy to escape into the sunshine.

To our delight we found a shop that sold fresh sandwiches with salad and fruit salad.  One of the joys of travelling is eating the local food,  but we really have missed salad and fresh vegetables.

So we sat in the garden in the middle of one of the very impressive boulevards surrounded by huge trees and ate lunch. We were fortifying ourselves for our next cultural onslaught.

Having learnt from experience (!) we checked the opening hours of the  Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza only to discover that we only had just over an hour to view the 200 paintings and that it was free at this time on Mondays.

This time we both loved it!  It was a private collection originally, and it seemed that Mr and Mrs Thyssen-Bornemisza had clearly had a wonderful time choosing an amazing array of paintings that were displayed in chronological order from ancient to modern.

The artists included  Gaugin, Renoir, Manet, Van Gogh and many others.  My favorite was a particularly beautiful Degas of some ballerinas dressed in aqua tutus.  Just gorgeous!  I'm sure I had it on a swap card when I was in primary school.

Unlike most art collections you could actually take photos ( without a flash of course! ) so my (not very considered) approach was to walk around and take photos of anything I liked! Very random as you will see in the photos!
The variety,  colours and diversity of the works was really inspiring.

So now with our culture levels at an all time high what did we do? ? We went shopping!!

To console myself about my sore leg I bought two brightly colored cotton scarves at Desigual which is a shop with a very distinctive style. ..and very nice scarves.I had to buy two because then I got a significant discount. ..great work Dianne I said to myself.
Then we collapsed for a drink and some tapas - well Nachos actually and fried eggplant sliced and served with honey - odd but very nice.

Then we retraced our steps back to the hotel so I could get organised as I had to be ready to leave the hotel at 5 am on the free shuttle bus the next morning.  Aaaaagh!

Before I could leave Ewan had to give me a lesson about all of the technology I now  had to operate alone..it will be a miracle if I manage half of it I think!

Your very cultured correspondent

Dianne