[Leica] IMG: Madrid, mostly art

[Jim Hemenway]

All very enjoyable, Nathan.

Thank you for again visiting Madrid for us.

Jim Hemenway



On 8/4/20 1:05 AM, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
> Last Friday I made the first trip away from Alicante since coming home from my last business trip in early March. I have long wanted to make another day trip to Madrid, alone, to visit art museums at my own pace and generally enjoy the big city for a few hours. So that’s what I did on Friday, the first day of my summer vacation. The logistics were simple: I took the high speed train AVE at 7 a.m., arriving in Madrid at 9:30, spent the day there, and took a 19:20 train back to Alicante in the evening. I started by visiting the Museo Reina Sofia, the main contemporary art museum in Madrid, which houses Picasso’s Guernica painting (no pics of that, as there is a prohibition against photography in that room, and there are several attendants to enforce it). I then took a walk in the magnificent Parque de Buen Retiro, Madrid’s equivalent of New York’s Central Park, and then went to the recently re-opened Museo del Prado to see (again) some of my own favourites from previous visits, including the Flemish masters, Hieronymous Bosch, the Spanish painters Veláquez, Goya, Murillo etc. In-between I visited another cultural icon, the bar El Brillante, and had an early lunch of their excellent version of one of Madrid’s signature sandwiches, the bocadillo de calamares. After the Prado I walked to the centre of the city (I walked everywhere; given the epidemic, I did not want to use Madrid’s metro to move around as I usually do), first Puerta del Sol, heart of the shopping district, and then Plaza Mayor, a large square containing Madrid’s old town hall and lined by bars and restaurants that usually making a roaring trade vastly overcharging the tourists for mediocre food. But not now. The plaza was virtually deserted, and had I wanted a table at one of the restaurants that were open for business (quite a few had not bothered to re-open) I would have had ample choice. The museums were also almost empty—they are only allowed to let in 1/3 of the usual maximum number of visitors, but do not even come close to that. This was nice for me, not that nice for the museums.
>
> The virus-control procedures are quite strict. It goes without saying that facemasks are compulsory everywhere; to enter the Prado you must submit to a temperature check and if you score 37.5C or above, you will not be admitted. I was slightly concerned because I had just spent an hour in the Retiro park, and the outside temperature was getting close to the afternoon high of 40C, but I need not have worried—my temperature was 36.5. At the Atocha train station where were gates through which passengers would pass, and the same rules applied—anybody with a temperature of over 37.5C would not be allowed to board the train. On the train, none of the usual services were available—the cafeteria car was closed, no free earphones or newspapers were distributed as is usually the case, and passengers were encouraged to stay in their seat throughout the journey and not to talk to other passengers. Obviously masks were worn by everyone throughout.
>
> Enough words. Here are the photos I took, many of the art works at the Reina Sofia, a musuem I have visited before but always together with someone else. This was the first time I really had time to explore it, and I was really astounded by the quality of Spanish painting in the postwar decades, when cultural life in this country was constrained by the Franco dictatorship—but this did not keep its artists from producing excellent work (I see some of the same when I visit Poland and look at art from Communist times—the censors were too stupid to catch some of the nuances of modern art; writers had it more difficult).
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> So come for a Covid walk around Madrid, that looks familiar and yet very different from the city I am used to visiting:
>
> http://www.frozenlight.eu/madrid_july2020/ <http://www.frozenlight.eu/madrid_july2020/>
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> Cheers,
> 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/>
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> Cycling: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator <http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator>
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> YNWA
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> "I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right"
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