Madrid part II

Everywhere we go! No photos.... grrrr...

Good way to make this guy grumpy.

Friday morning we decided to head the opposite way we went the day before, and marched off to see the Royal Palace. We were frustrated to see that, once again, no photographs were allowed... WHY are no photographs allowed in so many places in Europe??? However, the palace itself was quite nice. The girls had fun counting up clocks (they found 24) since apparently in the castle's 2,800 rooms there are over 200. I must admit we did find the castle quite tacky, with all the gold rococo ornamentation and thrones guarded by large sculptures of lions, but it did live up to our idea of a royal palace. We found the facade of the palace fascinating: amidst the sober neoclassical columns there were two grand sculptures: Montezuma and Atahualpa, rulers of Mexico and Peru at the time of Spanish conquest. Inside we saw numerous references to Columbus (and God) giving the Americas to the king and queen which was a bit nauseating, but is appropriate to how they viewed the 'new world'.

Walking to the Palace

The Royal Palace
View from Palace courtyard

Facade of Palace from interior courtyard

Montezuma from palace facade.
Atahualpa (Inca king).

Queen Isabella holding a box holding a jeweled crucifix.

Entrance to the Royal Palace

After the palace- right before the vomit incident.

After the palace we noticed that Bella was looking rather worn out and was acting very lethargic, and knowing that Sven and our friends had just had a fever a few days ago we thought we should get her home before she threw up on a precious 500 year old Spanish tapestry, but along the way she seemed a little better so we decided to tempt fate and head in to a restaurant first. Of course, she ended up throwing up on my plate. But all was well- it rather blended in and we were all done eating anyway. So Bella and I headed home for some snuggling time, while daddy and Eilidh went to the Museum of the Americas to see some of the objects that the Spanish had brought back from Alaska a couple hundred years ago. They got to see a one-eared mask and a large shaman's doll from the Alutiiq region as well as Tlingit objects . It was very well laid out and lit and almost completely barren (they were two of 5 in the museum) although the objects that Sven was looking for were spread out amongst quite a few rooms.

When they got home we had some good solid relaxation time and went to bed early, which felt great. We spent a few hours after the kids went to sleep working out travel details for after Morocco... so many moving parts and pieces!




Saturday- We woke up to a un-feverish and hungry Bella, which made us all happy! Sven had slipped out to go back to the Prado Art museum and see the Dutch and Flemish rooms, which we'd missed on Thursday... he was stunned and disturbed by Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights Altarpiece which, painted in the 1500s, was 400 years ahead of its time. He was also floored by Goya yet again (and his dark end-of-life period). By ten or so we had all somehow managed to get out of the apartment and walked down to the Reina Sofia art museum, home to Picasso's famous Guernica painting. We were pretty blown away by the museum. For a museum that I'd never heard about for it to have so many Goya, Picasso, Surrealist, and Miro masterworks in it was fantastic.... also, a plus for the kids was to have 20s black and white silent movies playing in strategic exhaustion spots within the building. The kids LOVED the Spanish artist Joan Miro. At a certain point we all ran out of steam and went to have lunch, going back to see the last of the surrealist and Dali works that we'd missed. After the Reina Sofia museum we took a leisurely walk to the public gardens where we lounged on the grass for a while and Sven encouraged me (Great idea- and the kids were happy about not having to go again too!) to go back to the Prado to see the Dutch and Flemish work that we'd missed the other day, which was mindblowing.

sculpture outside of the museum

Picasso's 'Head of a Woman'

Picasso

A Miro example of a piece of art done to support the people in the fight to get back Spain from the Franco dictatorship.

PicassoMiro

Eilidh and Bella both loved this Miro.

Eilidh's favorite Picasso.

Bella sketching the Vitruvian man at the Pinnocchio restaurant outside of the museum.

Sculpture on top of the Administry of Agriculture building. Really!
After the museum- in the park.

A word about Picasso's Guernica Painting: Picasso had been approached by the Spanish government to work on a painting for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. He struggled and struggled trying to come up with an appropriate topic and almost gave up, when the Spanish civil war occurred. During this war, Spain's government was in shambles and the Spanish Nationalist forces (Franco) basically 'gave' a Basque town up to the German and Italian warplanes to bomb. This was a town where a fair number of revolutionaries came from but at the time of the bombing was filled with mostly women and children. No one knows how many died, but estimates are anywhere from 2-3,000 people (plus animals). Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work toured around to various museums around the world in the years following the Guernica incident, at each stop raising money for the cause of Spanish peace. Picasso's instructions were clear: Guernica should not come to Spain until they had a democratic, peaceful government. It wasn't until 40 years later (after General Franco died) that the painting was given to the Reina Sofia museum along with many of the studies for this piece.

After an early dinner (6 oclock is early in this country) and a few minutes gaping at a hotel entrance cordoned off by police and filled with teenagers (waiting for Bon Jovi to come out) we headed home to call the Simplers. A good, full day... we couldn't believe that we'd just spent a full day at a museum with two young kids and had survived, and actually enjoyed ourselves.

lovely sewer grate

Guarding the Prado

Statue of Velazquez outside the Prado.

Another look outside our window
Journal time.