Sunday, March 31, 2002 10:10
Weather: Blue skies, cool breezes, warm sun
Location: La Suiza patisserie

Paul and I made it up and out around 9am yesterday, had breakfast at La Suiza, and were at the Prado shortly after 10. At first, it looked like it was closed again, and I despaired. Then we saw the long lineups snaking towards the northern end of the building, where the entrance really was.

Inside, we took our separate paces and went through the 1st floor, where we´d entered. There was a lot of spectacular art, principally Spanish, but also including substantial areas of Flemish and Dutch art, with which I´m a little more familiar. Each piece was accompanied by a little plaque bearing explanatory detail, but these were exclusively in Spanish so I found them somewhat frustrating and slow to work through. As a result, I tended to skip through the galleries much faster than Paul, who lingered to read and appreciate each work.

We went down to the museum´s cafeteria for lunch, which featured gazpacho soup and an excellent paella mixta. By that time, I was getting tired of the 18th century art on the first floor.

We restarted in the roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor, which had some truly exceptional works. Having recently read another book set in Rome, and always being drawn by the sordid histories of its many and varied emperors, I especially enjoyed working through the art from their various eras. Paul helped me work through translating some of the descriptive texts, which also helped.

Finally, we worked quickly through the rest of the ground floor, both tiring at this point. I wished I´d started there: the earlier art was filled with much more detail and colour than the later works upstairs, and I wished for more time to appreciate them. Guess I´ll just have to come back!

We walked back towards the Plaza de Santa Ana, found a bar, and stopped in for a drink and to figure out the next step. This was pretty clear: laundry. The first laundromat was still closed (and shows every sign of being out of business) but the second was open and full of people. We loaded our clothes in and went to work on the Internet terminals. The place was expensive--€7 for a full load wash & dry--but I for one was in no position to quibble.

After a nap, we went out for a walk and dinner. We covered a lot of ground, and it was 11pm by the time we got back to our quartier. As usual, it was packed with people. We had excellent calamari and ham tapas with wine, then moved on, sampling a couple of other cerveseries [not sure this is the right term] before calling it a night at 1:30 and heading to bed.
posted by Tom at 5:24 AM | link |