Dispatch: Madrid

The trip to the airport was uneventful. The security line was surprisingly sparse and there were no intimate encounters with TSA agents: not even a handshake. A US Airways agent approached me in the Pete’s Coffee line and asked if Polly’s killer was still on death row. “Why do we waste our money on shit like that?” he asked when informed that the killer had spent more time on death row than Polly spent on earth. I had no ready answer.

Prior to taking off we learned that Spanish Air Controllers had launched a wildcat strike, stranding tens of thousands of travelers. I guess that their $430,000 annual salary weren’t enough to get them through these austere times. We hadn’t intended to spend our hard earned vacation in Philadelphia, our connection destination, but there was no turning back at this point. However, we boarded on time, were seated, had a pleasant flight and arrived in the City of Brotherly Love 30-minutes early. Violet and I shared a snack, boarded our flight to Madrid, settled into our first cabin seats, secured by trading precious frequent flyer miles, and indulged in cocktails, steak, red wine and melatonin prior to falling into a fitful sleep as our Airbus 320 jetted over the Atlantic Ocean.



Goya - Naked Maja



The Madrid airport seemed deserted. We quickly secured our luggage from the carousel, passed through the immigration check and jumped into a taxi for the short trip to our strategically located, beautiful little hotel. By 10:00 a.m. we had walked to the world famous Prado art museum, purchased tickets and were surrounded by the achievements of giants.



Goya - Saturn Eating His Young



Unless one has visited the great art museums: the Louvre, the Metropolitan, the Uffizi, it is impossible to describe peerless artistic achievement. One is surrounded on all sides by the masterpieces that adorn coffee table books, hotel lobbies, and college art history courses. The Prado focuses upon 15^th to 19^th Century Spanish artists like Velazquez, perhaps the greatest and most accomplished of all the early Spanish painters, to Goya, the 19^th Century genius who was equally adept at depicting the sublime and the horrific. But, there is more, much more. With more than 3,000 paintings on display, it is impossible to see everything in just one visit, so we were strategic.

After 4 exhausting hours, we had seen enough. Perhaps the most striking masterpiece of all is the Garden of Earthly Delights, a vivid and surrealistic triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, a 15^th Century Dutch master. An allegory in 3-panels, the Garden of Earthly Delights traces original sin through man’s ultimate descent into hell. If one is to believe that part of Bosch’s genius is his ability to capture and portray 15 and 16^th Century norms and sensibilities, then one is left wondering how civilization had the energy, for desire is never in question, to evolve into the future.

We were exhausted. Our internal clocks were flipped upside down, our feet were aching and our bodies were stuck in low gear. We vowed to eat Tapas’, drink red wine and fall exhausted into our bed only after sundown. With a slow pace and happy hearts Violet and I ambled back to our hotel, past majestic architecture and the kinds of plaza’s only found in Europe, until we found a neighborhood restaurant that was doing a brisk business and beckoned us with aroma and anticipation. We ate our Tapas, drank a glass of Spanish red wine, and collapsed in ecstasy not long after the sun set in the East.

What a perfect beginning. For the time being we are through slaying windmills. For the next 10-days, as we visit Seville, Granada and finally Barcelona, we will focus on food, drink, culture and foreign adventure.