Once in a while I take a day trip to Madrid to visit art museums and galleries,
and just to enjoy the big city. The high-speed train covers the 440 km from
Alicante to Madrid in 2 hours 20 minutes, making it perfectly doable. And now
that I have turned 60, I get a completely unjustified discount on the train
ticket—I mean, my salary has not gone down, and I still occupy the same amount
of space on the train, but I’ll take the discount.
I arrived at Madrid’s Atocha station around 11 a.m. and had made an itinerary
of 3 museums to visit, adding a fourth once there. My first stop was the Prado,
where I go mainly to see my perennial favourites, like the Garden of Earthly
Delights and other works by Hieronymus Bosch. A lot of other people do the same:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-3fJPSqK/A
In the same room is a round wooden table painted by Bosch, depicting the seven
deadly sins, here gluttony:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-XjDQm46/A
I love looking at the faces of people from more than 500 years ago.
As I was walking to the Prado from Atocha, I saw posters advertising a Georgia
O’Keeffee exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery, a bit further up the
road from the Prado. It was not on my planned itinerary, but since it was
raining and I wanted to see O’Keeffee’s paintings, I went there. And I was not
disappointed. The art was great, and I got a nice image of this museum guard
spending her time reading a book about art:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-4x5Hgwq/A
After visiting Georgia O´Keeffee, the next stop was lunch, and after that a
visit to the Fundación Mapfre on Paseo Recoletos. Mapfre is a big insurance
company, and like other similar companies (banks, the phone company Telefónica
etc.) it has a large art museum in the centre of Madrid. I went there to see
and exhibiton of photographs by Bill Brandt, but they also had a nice Espace
Miró, where by chance another visitor spent some time looking at this painting
at length, thus providing me with a photo opportunity:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-xtpMZHX/A
While I was at the Fundación Mapfre, the rain stopped and the rest of my day in
Madrid I enjoyed good weather, conducive to walking around a bit. A couple of
new monuments have been added in the past couple of years in the area near
Madrid’s city hall on Plaza Cibeles. In 2019, this monument to the refugees was
put up on Paseo Recoletos, to replace the large “Refugees welcome” banner that
had been draped across the façade of the city hall:
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-nV52Njd/A
And the newest addition, right on Cibeles, to honour the victims of the Covid
pandemic, around 100,000 here in Spain (the official death toll is around
80,000 but if you go by excess mortality, the number climbs into six digits):
https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-CJmCtgw/A
Much more to come.
Nathan
Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu <http://www.frozenlight.eu/>
http:// <http://www.greatpix.eu/>www.greatpix.eu
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
<http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws>Blog: http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/
<http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/>
Cycling: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator
<http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator>
YNWA
"I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right"
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