vini vidi vici: Prado mission accomplished!

Thu, March 23 - an afternoon of rest in between things. I've been here a week and a day. it feels like a month. Time dilates so curiously.

Tuesday night was a nice dinner time with the whole company. The coolest part was when Angela asked me to pick up Ariel and bring him to her work, so we could go from there to her old place to pick up mail. I think it's the first time I play babysitter and am responsible for a small child, in the open streets. I have been traumatized in the USA that adults have to stay away from children... play parks are off-limits if you don't have your own child, threats of demands and child molestation loom over anyone... I was so afraid to lose him or for something to happen... but all went well, of course :)

Wednesday was when I woke up before noon, was out and about by 1pm, and had lunch with Angie. Met her by her job and we went through one of the typical european fast-food buffet deals. If you've been to Ikea's cafeteria you'll know what i'm talking about. It was past 3:30pm by the time i made it to the Prado, and I had plans at 5:30pm, but I figured it was now or never.

I must say I expected something a little bigger and splendorous than what I saw. And it could easily be renamed the Goya Museum. At least a third of the holdings are by that artist! It's mostly art from the XVII century, a fairly homogeneous collection. The 3 rooms of classical sculptures have only ancient copies of famous original pieces. Pretty sad collection. I see now why the Guernica was moved to the Reina Sofia, and I'm glad for it, personally. But the last things I saw were the highlights of the visit: the Dolphin's Treasure this piece is made entirely of precious stones... not colored pigments!, Bosch (Dali's medieval precursor) & Brueghel, and a temporary exhibit of the legacy of the collector Ramon de Errazu, which had works by Fortuny, Madrazo, and Rico. Very cool stuff. The rest was eh. I realized that after seeing NY's Metropolitan Museum, it's going to be hard to be impressed.

A curious thing was that in every other room there were individuals painting copies of some pieces. Apparently it is very common to ask for permission to come in to work from the original. Random easels with works in progress were everywhere. Some very *really* close to the originals!

By 6:30 everyone was out of work, but Angela and Ariel opted out of the outing to the IMAX Madrid. Cris and I hiked to the place, in the south-east of Madrid, a more desolate and more under-construction part of the city. We got there pretty early, and the only thing around was a Corte Ingles (I finally made it to one, gotroot!), with a cafeteria, so we hung out there for a couple of hours. I discovered Grimbergen beer (a bit dark but with a sweet aftertaste) and that I can't pronounce a lot of particular sounds of different languages, like the spanish "R" or the dutch "G" (makes it quite hard to pronounce the name of the beer to Cris' satisfaction!). The food was pretty terrible... but they had his favorite food...

The show itself was cool, Cris had never been at an IMAX before, and the best part was that each showing consisted of 2 movies, one regular (Ocean Oasis, a Southern California overview of marine life) and one 3D (the enchanted castle, a gothic cgi about a rock star tempted by the devil...) So for the price of one ticket (€10) we got an hour and a half IMAX experience overview!

Today I looked into traveling to Paris, there was a deal on a website for €60 by plane, and it's about €120 by overnight train. I'm debating if it's worth spending the extra money, for the experience... then again, it'd be traveling mostly by night, so I wouldn't see much. *debating*