February 1

2-1
Katie and I went to the Museo del Prado today. It’s one of the three major art museums in Madrid. Again, no pictures allowed inside, but I got some of the outside. That alone is beautiful. It’s a huge museum. We were there for four and a half hours and only saw one floor. By the end we were like: this is too much art in one day! I know Janny would be shaking her head in disgust at us! J But it was really cool to see all these famous paintings and sculptures. Today we mostly saw late Renaissance and a lot of Baroque paintings, and some Classical-era sculpture. It was hard to believe that what we saw was 2000 years old and still in as good shape as it was! I wonder how many of the exhibits are originals and how many are copies. There are probably a lot of copies, especially with the older pieces. We saw a lot of Goya, and his Black Paintings. I think that’s what they were called. They were all really dark and grotesque. We saw some of his other stuff too. We saw Velazquez, el Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Murillo, Van Dyck, Poussin, and tons more. There were also a whole lot of portraits of royal families. I wish I was more into paintings. I like them a lot, but I know many people who would have gotten a lot more out of such an amazing collection. There were a lot of the paintings that were really beautiful, but there were some really horrific ones, too. There were two of Saturn eating his son. The first one, by Goya, had the head and arm already gone and Saturn was biting off the other arm. That one was weird, but it wasn’t as terrifying as the other one I saw. I don’t remember who it was by; I think I was concentrating more on looking away after I saw it. Saturn was holding his son on his lap and taking a big bite out of his chest. It was so disturbing. If anything would give me nightmares it would be that. Ew. Anyway, Katie and I are going to go back another day to see the second floor. I think that has more of the earlier paintings, like the Italian Renaissance ones that I’m eager to see. It’s nice because the map of the museum they give you has a long list with thumbnails of masterpieces to see. So if you want an abbreviated tour of the museum the highlights are all right there. But we want to see all of it, of course! And I’ll have plenty of opportunities to see the museum because the art history class I want to take is held in the Prado! So that’ll be cool.
Today was tiring. I slept till 11, and it’s only 7:40 and I’m exhausted. It was funny; my señora was asking last night what my plans were for today, and I told her that I wanted to sleep in this morning. I got up at 11, took a shower, and didn’t even emerge from my room other than that until noon. She came in and asked if I wanted tea, and then she told me she was surprised I was up so early! Here I was thinking I slept the whole morning away. I wonder how late I would have to get up in order for her to consider it sleeping in.
Not much more to talk about now. Tomorrow I start school stuff! I’m looking forward to seeing what the classes are all about. This past week has been nice to explore the city and all that, but I want a set schedule. Then I’ll know how to plan my time and when I can talk to people on Skype!
Bethany