Our Week in Spain (part 1)

March 16, 2002

After sleeping late on a rainy morning, we resolve to take a cab into central Madrid in order to see the Prado. Our guide book says this museum has 3,000 canvasses: Goya, Ruebens, Titian, and lots of other big name painter type dudes. There is also a special exhibit, borrowed from Scotland, of two Rembrandts.

It's a long walk, through miles of stone, and our legs are worn into nubs in the name of art. But we see the place, for the most part. And I buy a CD of JPegs to supplement the experience, although the commentary is all in Spanish.

We take a taxi back to the hotel, and meet an enormous traffic jam. The roads are filled with Spaniards out on a Saturday night, most of them seeming to be aimed at Parque Sur, and the delights of our mall. After half an hour in traffic, in sight of the hotel, we bail on the taxicab and walk the last few hundred yards, leaving the stalled traffic in our dust.

This is to be our last night in Spain, so we buy some supplies in the grocery store and settle in to the hotel room of a night of pay-per-view television. It's a Knight's Tale again tonight. Such it is with Spanish pay-per-view, very little accommodation for non-Spanish speakers.

Tomorrow we fly to Amsterdam, and then home, via Minneapolis.