Day 69
Day 69
Friday, October 20, 2006
Madrid, Spain
The day started of with a breakfast of bread, bread, bread, and coffee ant the café attached to the hotel. It was drizzling rain outside as we walked trough the streets to the Renia Sofia, stopping along the way at the construction site of a new Herzog and deMeuron museum being built along the Paseo del Prado. The project was a renovation of an existing brick building in which the architects had removed the first floor and suspended all of the brick from cantilevered steel supports. There will also be an entrance courtyard in front of the museum which has “green” side wall which was really impressive to see. At the Renia Sofia we had to wait out front for a while for it to open which gave us a good opportunity to look at the large anodized red aluminum louvers covering Jean Nouvell’s addition to the Museum. Although these louvers seemed more functional than those on the Torre Agbar tower their ½ inch thickness seemed excessive and wasteful. Inside the Museum there was of course the Picasso’s Guernica which was a really amazing painting. It was especially interesting to see the accompanying sketches and photographs of the progress of the painting. There was also some very cool work by Pablo Gargallo and Julio Gonzolez, as well as some Salvador Dali paintings. Upstairs was some really good contemporary paintings from current Spanish artists.
After everyone waited for me downstairs in the café we went over to the train station to get reservations to Valencia. Several of us didn’t have our eurail passes but with Lynn’s help we were able to talk the guy into giving us reservations. I borrowed Cheddar’s pass to get reservations on the night train from Madrid to Paris for after the Spain portion of the trip. After that we went to an exhibit on contemporary Spanish architecture at the botanical gardens before breezing through the Prado in order to see a couple important classics that Lynn told us about. Sky, Lynn, Damian and I went to a private contemporary collection further down the street which had some interesting modern art and a good impressionism collection. I walked back to the hotel and hung out in the hotel reading until dinner. We ate in a little boutique restaurant in the gay district that was entirely decorated in pink neon lights, but the food was really good.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Madrid, Spain
The day started of with a breakfast of bread, bread, bread, and coffee ant the café attached to the hotel. It was drizzling rain outside as we walked trough the streets to the Renia Sofia, stopping along the way at the construction site of a new Herzog and deMeuron museum being built along the Paseo del Prado. The project was a renovation of an existing brick building in which the architects had removed the first floor and suspended all of the brick from cantilevered steel supports. There will also be an entrance courtyard in front of the museum which has “green” side wall which was really impressive to see. At the Renia Sofia we had to wait out front for a while for it to open which gave us a good opportunity to look at the large anodized red aluminum louvers covering Jean Nouvell’s addition to the Museum. Although these louvers seemed more functional than those on the Torre Agbar tower their ½ inch thickness seemed excessive and wasteful. Inside the Museum there was of course the Picasso’s Guernica which was a really amazing painting. It was especially interesting to see the accompanying sketches and photographs of the progress of the painting. There was also some very cool work by Pablo Gargallo and Julio Gonzolez, as well as some Salvador Dali paintings. Upstairs was some really good contemporary paintings from current Spanish artists.
After everyone waited for me downstairs in the café we went over to the train station to get reservations to Valencia. Several of us didn’t have our eurail passes but with Lynn’s help we were able to talk the guy into giving us reservations. I borrowed Cheddar’s pass to get reservations on the night train from Madrid to Paris for after the Spain portion of the trip. After that we went to an exhibit on contemporary Spanish architecture at the botanical gardens before breezing through the Prado in order to see a couple important classics that Lynn told us about. Sky, Lynn, Damian and I went to a private contemporary collection further down the street which had some interesting modern art and a good impressionism collection. I walked back to the hotel and hung out in the hotel reading until dinner. We ate in a little boutique restaurant in the gay district that was entirely decorated in pink neon lights, but the food was really good.
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