Our last day in Madrid has been set aside for the art museums. We have to be on a train to Seville at 5pm, so we got an early start to be at the Museo del Prado when it opened – unfortunately we thought it opened at 9am instead of 10am and missed out on an extra hour of sleep. The morning walk from the hotel was beautiful along narrow streets before the city got moving.
Down the street from our hotel before Madrid woke up.
Diego Velázquez is one of Spain’s most famous artists and is honored with a statue in front of the museum.
Diego Velázquez in front of Museo del Prado.
We had time to kill before the museum opened, so Sarah and I played around shooting portraits with my 50mm lens.
Sarah in front of Museo del Prado.
Carl in front of Museo del Prado.
Photography inside the museum was forbidden, so I don’t have anything to show here. My personal favorites were works by Claude Lorrain, the one piece by Caravaggio and all the works he inspired by Boneri, Ribera, LaTour and Velázquez. We grabbed a quick lunch in the cafe at the museum and then walked to the modern art museum, Museo Reina Sofia, stopping along the way to watch a group of bicyclists playing around in a small plaza.
A mass of bike riders practicing tricks in front of Museo Reina Sofia.
Neither Sarah nor I were as captivated by the work in Museo Reina Sofia as we were in Museo del Prado, so we moved through the museum rather quickly – our primary goal was to visit Picasso’s Guernica. The piece was fascinating to see, its mural-sized scale makes a much greater impact than a photo in a book or online. Even more interesting though was a refresher on the impact the painting has made around the world as a statement about war.
There is a lot of graffiti in Madrid. Most of the small shops roll down doors when they are closed, and many have custom paint jobs to advertise or make a statement of their own. Those that don’t have artwork are severely abused by taggers, but good original art is usually left alone. Not all shop owners are so lucky:
Painted roll-down storefront with graffiti.
An alternative is to have a cow guard your shop.
This cow sold neither ale nor hops.
Our next stop is Seville via high speed rail. I love the trains in Europe – two and a half hours in a comfortable chair with a changing view, extremely smooth and surprisingly quiet. I worked on processing pictures from the trip while Sarah read.
The high speed train between Madrid and Seville peaked at about 170 mph.
Us in a train window at the Seville train station.
We grabbed a cab to our hotel near Alameda de Hercules, unpacked, and grabbed tapas for dinner nearby. Tomorrow we set out on bikes once again to learn about the city.