madrid —- lisbon
Spain:Madrid:cyber bar
back in madrid for an afternoon before heading to lisbon tonight on the 11pm alsa bus. see www.alsa.es for a bus schedule. right… anyway, the past week has been mostly more madrid, morgan got here without issue, went immediately to sleep, and we stayed in the parajas hostal for 4 nights, in a rather warm little room (heat wave in madrid has summer temps right now), very close to the prado on ficus road, with a little mini-balcony with a view of the punk rockers below us drinking beer at 10am, sleeping and doing other unmentionables in to the wee hours. weeeeee. such is 40oz Cruz Campo inspired anarchy. we managed to see the walking distance plaza´s of interest, plaza mayor is rather cluttered now due to a stamp fair that is taking up the major part of the plaza. prado was good with a goya dibujos exhibition on the top floor, nasty little sardonic sketches (reminds instantly of raymond pettibon sketches) that can also be viewed in the goya metro station which is strangely less clausterphobic than the little circular room in the prado. i had forgotten about the Hieronymus Bosch stuff, which you can stare at for hours and find gross weirdities if you are so inclined. fun. also notable were Velasquez, Rubens, Ribera and my favorites, goya´s “las pinturas negras”, a series of authentically disturbed paintings concerning levitating witches, assorted freaks, even a dog lost in some kind of ghoulish dog world and saturn devouring his son. there were many other not so hot renaissance paintings of nude chubby chicks and fruits in bowls and other such lame topics for a painting. not being of avid museum attention spans, we only needed about 2-3hrs for the whole thing, then we escaped to the buen retiro park, where people rent paddle boats and proceed to oar themselves in circles and into each other. there was a peruvian band playing that covered “knights in white satin” which i still cant get out of my head. its a horrible song and i´ve always thought the moody blues were some kind of cruel joke. monday was the reina sofia, which had a picasso exhibit and a robert frank exhibit that was my favorite exhibit there. he did the exile on main st cover, and has many cool photographs and short films… we went to toledo on the 5th, an arabesque medieval town that reminded me of the cities in morocco because of the medina streets. the only notable thing was priest who laid a celestial bomber as we walked past him on an empty street. perhaps and omen… so we have decided to head to lisbon, it really makes sense to do portugal now, we will only cover the south and probably stick to the coast for that matter, then head for andalucia and up towards barcelona. oh yeah, we were lucky enough to get a reservation for a hotel on the 10th in pamplona for the san fermin festival (running of the bulls)
–hasta