Spain, Days 7-9 (plus my return to Ithaca and a glancing review of Tron: Legacy)
This can be summed up as follows:
Drove to Madrid, skipping Toledo because Mom said like hell were we going to get her lost in the tiny twisty one-way streets of yet another old city center. Successfully found our Madrid hotel, after a few map and traffic mishaps -- par for the course by that point, really. Vicky stayed in; the rest of us went out for dinner.
The next day Vicky slept in until afternoon (recovering from her cold) while Mom, Dad and I went to the Prado. Stood in line outside in 40 degree (Fahrenheit) weather for an hour and a half just to get tickets, at which point I insisted Dad get the comprehensive three-museum tickets that also get you into the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen, because there was no way on earth I was standing in another line like that.
It takes three days to do the Prado properly. We had about five hours. *sigh* Still, we saw a lot of interesting stuff, starting with a special exhibition on Reubens (who ought to have been a Hollywood director, swear to god), and I have discovered that I love El Greco, so that is always a plus. Also, I have to wonder if Bosch was an influence on Dr. Seuss, because their buildings have a similar complete and lunatic disregard for the rules of gravity and actual human habitations, though Seuss, of course, contains much less sex. *grin*
We got takeout lunch from a Burger King (because after a certain point, one wants familiarity more than one wants to spend an hour trying to work menus in a foreign language, no matter how good the resulting tapas may be) and went back to the hotel to wake Vicky. After eating and recovering from sore feet and backs, we went to the Thyssen and did the tour of the history of western art, plus some of the special collection, but skipped the ground floor because my family is of the general opinion that while the development of western art after about 1925 may be intellectually interesting, it is generally not something we find aesthetically pleasing.
The next day Dad, Mom, and I got up appallingly early and took the Metro to the airport. The Madrid airport requires endless walking to get anywhere -- it seems to be all stretched out horizontally rather than layered vertically -- but I did get through check-in, security, and so on. Then, of course, my plane was delayed. *sigh*
Nonetheless, I arrived safely in Newark and discovered that Susan and her brother-in-law were waiting to meet me and take me to Madison. Yay! The three of us also went to see Tron: Legacy that night. I have never seen the original Tron, but the new movie is basically a standard action/adventure movie, so it pretty much stands on its own. Also, some company (I think either Marvel or Dark Horse) has been putting out comicizations of the original movie, plus a comics-only transition story (Tron: Betrayal, IIRC), and I glanced at those as I was shelving new magazines a few weeks ago, so. Anyway, that was fun. Not especially deep or coherent -- they really needed another five minutes of explanation and to take the distortion off some voices so the dialogue was clearer -- but as I said, fun.
And then, of course, I got another cold.
So I drove to Ithaca on the 30th with a cold, slept a lot, and went in to work on the 31st with a cold. That was madness. We closed three hours early yesterday, but did more business than we often do on a normal full-length day. It was as if every person in Ithaca was terrified that no store would be open today, and all descended upon us to do their shopping yesterday. And then after I closed, I couldn't just go home. I had to drive to the grocery store because I was out of cold medicine, having taken all of it to Spain to deal with my previous cold!
Argh.
The smoke shop was much less crazy today, thank goodness, but I am still going to bed early and not getting up until at least noon tomorrow.
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Drove to Madrid, skipping Toledo because Mom said like hell were we going to get her lost in the tiny twisty one-way streets of yet another old city center. Successfully found our Madrid hotel, after a few map and traffic mishaps -- par for the course by that point, really. Vicky stayed in; the rest of us went out for dinner.
The next day Vicky slept in until afternoon (recovering from her cold) while Mom, Dad and I went to the Prado. Stood in line outside in 40 degree (Fahrenheit) weather for an hour and a half just to get tickets, at which point I insisted Dad get the comprehensive three-museum tickets that also get you into the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen, because there was no way on earth I was standing in another line like that.
It takes three days to do the Prado properly. We had about five hours. *sigh* Still, we saw a lot of interesting stuff, starting with a special exhibition on Reubens (who ought to have been a Hollywood director, swear to god), and I have discovered that I love El Greco, so that is always a plus. Also, I have to wonder if Bosch was an influence on Dr. Seuss, because their buildings have a similar complete and lunatic disregard for the rules of gravity and actual human habitations, though Seuss, of course, contains much less sex. *grin*
We got takeout lunch from a Burger King (because after a certain point, one wants familiarity more than one wants to spend an hour trying to work menus in a foreign language, no matter how good the resulting tapas may be) and went back to the hotel to wake Vicky. After eating and recovering from sore feet and backs, we went to the Thyssen and did the tour of the history of western art, plus some of the special collection, but skipped the ground floor because my family is of the general opinion that while the development of western art after about 1925 may be intellectually interesting, it is generally not something we find aesthetically pleasing.
The next day Dad, Mom, and I got up appallingly early and took the Metro to the airport. The Madrid airport requires endless walking to get anywhere -- it seems to be all stretched out horizontally rather than layered vertically -- but I did get through check-in, security, and so on. Then, of course, my plane was delayed. *sigh*
Nonetheless, I arrived safely in Newark and discovered that Susan and her brother-in-law were waiting to meet me and take me to Madison. Yay! The three of us also went to see Tron: Legacy that night. I have never seen the original Tron, but the new movie is basically a standard action/adventure movie, so it pretty much stands on its own. Also, some company (I think either Marvel or Dark Horse) has been putting out comicizations of the original movie, plus a comics-only transition story (Tron: Betrayal, IIRC), and I glanced at those as I was shelving new magazines a few weeks ago, so. Anyway, that was fun. Not especially deep or coherent -- they really needed another five minutes of explanation and to take the distortion off some voices so the dialogue was clearer -- but as I said, fun.
And then, of course, I got another cold.
So I drove to Ithaca on the 30th with a cold, slept a lot, and went in to work on the 31st with a cold. That was madness. We closed three hours early yesterday, but did more business than we often do on a normal full-length day. It was as if every person in Ithaca was terrified that no store would be open today, and all descended upon us to do their shopping yesterday. And then after I closed, I couldn't just go home. I had to drive to the grocery store because I was out of cold medicine, having taken all of it to Spain to deal with my previous cold!
Argh.
The smoke shop was much less crazy today, thank goodness, but I am still going to bed early and not getting up until at least noon tomorrow.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)