My and My Trouble-Making Self

Yesterday at long last I toured the Prado. I bought a combination ticket for it and the Royal Palace, both tours in English. The confirmation email was for only the Royal Palace in Spanish.

I told them the problem at the Palace but they didn’t solve it. I guess because it wasn’t their problem. When I got to the Prado we of course were a ticket short. So I told the problem again.

The guide said, “No problem; children are free,” and he took the youngest child and her mother off.

Children weren’t free.

The mother got very angry and said, trying to be respectful to me, that my problem wasn’t her problem. She was so aggressive to the guide he got angry in turn and said he was just a guide, not a secretary, that he had nothing to do with tickets.

I tried to defuse the situation, while still getting it solved, by asking who did I need to talk to. About that time another guide who had the company card came by and they bought me a ticket.

I was sorry to make everyone wait and the guide angry. If he hadn’t bought me a ticket my plan was to go back to the hotel and have the concierge help me pitch a wall-eyed fit.

I do NOT recommend Feel the City tours, and not just because of that. I got to the Palace at 9:25, twenty minutes early so I could solve my problem. Took a taxi and everything. We didn’t go in to the palace until almost an hour later. There were audio problems and personnel problems and more. I could have walked and saved nine Euros.

However, on the walk between the palace and the Prado our guide pointed out the San Miguel Market, except she called it “the Temple of Gastronomy.”

OMG, ya’ll. It deserves its own entry.

So I’ll go back to the palace and the Prado.

The palace is the biggest in Europe, over 3,200 rooms. It is bigger than Buckingham Palace or Versailles. We toured 25 rooms, less than 1%.

It was like some of the other palaces I’ve seen. Gold, frescoes on the ceiling, mirrors, marble and parquet floors. This was the first time I saw silk on the walls, though. I longed to touch it, but there were museum personnel in every room. My favorite room was the bathroom (surprise, surprise) with green walls and white porcelain figures all over. Google it, y’all.

The Prado was like other world-class museums. Velasquez, Goya, El Greco, a lot of others I’d never heard of, and Rubens. A lot of Rubens. Wisely, most of the paintings or artists had something to do with Spain, and apparently Rubens was commissioned to decorate some building and most of his paintings were from there.

Our guide started with a medieval painting that contained a “cacatero.” The painting showed Charon traveling with a soul, which was looking toward an angel on the Heaven side and so didn’t see the small figure taking a dump outside the entrance to Hell, which was disguised with lush vegetation.

Cacateros are always associated with Hell in these paintings, because apparently Adam and Eve would have never taken a shit if not for original sin.

Medieval people believed some weird stuff.

We saw most of the really important paintings (Las Molinas, La Perla, etc.) Some of my favorites were “the Black Paintings,” done on the walls of Goya’s house and removed after his death. The guide’s favorite black painting and mine were not the same because of a bad thing I saw the day before. I won’t detail what it was in case someone who knows Antonio reads this and shares. He forbid me to tell him the bad thing.

After an hour and a half we were on our own.

I ate my Croque Monsieur, which was “heated” for me but still stone cold, then walked around.

The only thing I saw on my own that was truly remarkable was “the treasure of the Dauphin.” This was a collection of objects (vases, cups, ewers, etc.) carved from various semi-precious stones ( rock crystal, lapis lazuli, jade, sardonyx (the first time I’ve really seen my birthstone.)) My favorite was the ewer (pitcher) with Narcissus as the handle. He is looking into the pitcher, not away, so when it is full of water he sees his reflection. I learned that from a video I saw; the pitcher was of course dry and in a case.

By 5:45 I was tired and my knee was stiff and really hurting. So I went to the hotel and took Aleve. Then I went out to have my “last dinner in Madrid.”