It is good be back in Spain again. I am staying at Cat's Hostel in the Heurtas district, near the museums. The hostel is high-tech with wristbands that operate the doors and even the lockers. It is geared toward the young twenties crowd with one upstairs bar and a cool cave bar downstairs that has a surprisingly good live band on the weekend, cheap beer, and too much smoke.
I have been hitting the museums, one a day to avoid burnout, and have found a very good way to improve the museum experience.
Number one: walk slowly, looking at each for a few seconds as you pass, if it speaks to you, stop. If not, keep walking. I stopped trying to find artistic merit. If it doesn't jump out at me, I keep on going. There are whole wings of museums that I breeze past, saving my energy for the good stuff (Rafael, Chagall, Renoir, Hopper).
Number two: Because major museums can be dreary with a heavy dose of artistic death, violence, and general unpleasantness, it is good to lighten the mood a little. Now this works much better with more than one person, but I still found it fun. As you walk past the boring pieces think of humorous alternate titles for the works. Really funny ones will leap out at you if you are in the right frame of mind. I found myself trying hard to suppress chuckles in the quiet echoing rooms. These two techniques got me through the three major museums in half the time and allowed me to avoid post-museum lethargy.
The Palicio Real, throne room shown above, is over-the-top impressive. It is a good example of fit-for-a-king. Apparently, if you rule a country full of poor peasants, nothing is too expensive for the royal family. I am sure they all wanted to out do the other kings and queens to show how important and powerful they were, but come on. Too much is too much. The best part of the palace was the armory--advertised as the best in the world. Now that was impressive! Not so much for the elaborately decorated armor that royals wore—if you were a king wearing armor, there was no doubt as to your status—but for the sheer barbarity and of the weapons. You immediately understood how different life was back then. Not for me, thanks.
Madrid is party central for the younger crowd and not really my kind of place. I am moving south to Cordoba soon.
I have heard many young Americans on the streets and in the hostel. On the whole, they tend to be very loud and oblivious. A few made me embarrassed to share their nationality. Hopefully they learn from their experience here.
