In With A Whimper, Not A Bang

Before you start reading my whine about art museums and art tours, do understand that Carol loved it all.  I, on the other hand, did not.

In 2001, we went to El Prado, the most famous art gallery in all of Spain.  And I whined about it the whole time -- it was like Carol had four single digit midgets with her.  My favorite complaint was that "I was tired of looking at fat dead Spanish princes and their fat dead horses."

I figured I owed it to Carol to suck it up and try El Prado again.  So I booked a nice tour guide through Tours By Locals, figuring I might soak up some knowledge and find El Prado more interesting this time.  Beatriz, our guide, has us for three hours for both El Prado and Reina Sofia, another famed art gallery.

For Carol, it went great.  For me, not so much.  

We landed around 6 am, and, as is our want on these trips, took the Madrid Metro to our hotel.  That was great, as their metro is easy to use.  That early in the morning, there weren't hoards of commuters, so the stations were easy to get around, and we easily found seats on the subway without having our bags get in the way of other people.

Our room was available at the hotel, which was great.  We stayed two nights at the Aloft Madrid Gran Via.  The metro was right outside, but we ended up walking almost everywhere because of the convenient location.  By a fluke of room location, we had a much bigger room than most people (the hotel took a weird turn at our room, so they couldn't do anything else with the space but make it large).  So we napped a bit and set off to walk just under a mile to El Prado to meet Beatriz at 11 am for our tour.

The first painting Beatriz took us to was both fabulous and a disaster (for me).  We went to see Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych, known as the Garden of Earthly Delights.  Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone else in the museum was in that same room.  I had a hard time seeing what she was pointing out in the painting, and I had a hard time understanding her talk between the crowds and her heavily-accented English.  That's when she lost me.

I was overwhelmed by the number of people in the room, and not being able to follow along.  I should have just walked out of the room and found a quieter, less crowded place.  But instead I didn't want to let Carol down.  Between the crowds and the jet lag, I proceeded to go downhill quickly.  Beatriz took a liking to Carol, primarily because Carol was quite interested and wasn't on the verge of being comatose.

Anyhow, she dragged us from room-to-room, painting to painting, with Carol soaking it in and my catching about ten percent of what she had to say.  Honestly, I don't remember what else we saw, but at least we didn't see that many fat dead Spanish princes nor their fat dead horses.  We saw some Goya, some Picasso, a different version of the Mona Lisa, painted currently with the one in the Louvre, as well as other classics that all ran together on me in my dazed state.  

My favorite part of the tour was stopping for a cold bottle of agua con gas, which helped.  My least favorite part is that no photos are allowed, even though I could take pictures in all of the other major art galleries we've been in recently.

And, I did have my hopes up high.  I had enjoyed most of the recent art museums we had been to, including Salvador Dali in Figueres, Picasso in Barcelona, Van Gogh in Amsterdam, and mostly the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (especially Rembrandt and Vermeer).  (Didn't care for Joan Miro in Barcelona, some of his work was interesting, but a lot of it was just crap).

The highlight of Reina Sofia was Picasso's classic work "Guernica."  I was able to understand most of what Beatriz was saying (it's awkward when she's speaking accented English and I have to ask Carol to translate for me.)  After that crowd, Beatriz took me to an exhibit that had a bench, so I sat there for a while.  Needing water, I got up and wandered off, but never could find an elevator to get back down to the cafe level.

It certainly was a mistake to try to power through the museums while jet lagged.  I felt bad for Carol, as I complained about how miserable the whole thing was -- overcrowded (and it was a Monday!), under-hydrated, and unable to understand much of what the guide was saying.  The happy news is that Carol really enjoyed it, and that's what counts -- the art lover in the Bolger-Farquhar couple got a lot out of it.  She even knew about the first Bosch painting.  I on the other hand, only thought Bosch was about kitchen appliances and had never heard of the painter nor the painting.

By the way, you could easily see how Bosch's early foray into surrealism (around 1500) was a major influence on Dali's style.

(Don't worry dear readers, Madrid gets much better for us, albeit not immediately.)