| The gargoyles atop the Atocha train station were really cool! |
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| Erin's Madrid Journals 6-16-02, Part 2 We reached the museum and went to the temporary exhibit first, which was an impressionist artist from the late 19th and early 20th century. It's interesting to me which paintings appeal to me vs. Glenn. Mostly, we liked the same pieces, but neither of us is a big impressionistic fan. After, we went back up to the main floor where they had a small free exhibit of Dali, Glenn's favorite artist (another revelation to me). We admired the admittedly strange sketches and a couple of finished works, but it wasn't much of an exhibit. I'll have to look through a book of his stuff later for a better sample. He is famous for the dripping clocks, that's how I think of him! Anyway, we got one audioguide for the museum and planned to share it, as the last few times we'd gotten an audioguide (most notably at the Alhambra in Granada), the guide had been pretty useless and almost annoying to Glenn. So we figured we could share this one and/or take turns. Well, this was not such a good idea in this case, as there was a lot to see and barely enough time to listen to a few painting descriptions in each room! The collection has over 600 years of works, with a representation from each successive artistic movement, and the audioguide was great about telling us what to look for in each. If you go, don't share the audioguides, get your own! We spent most of the afternoon at the museum until it was almost closing (7pm), then grabbed another Starbucks Frappuchino to cool off again. Very hot out there! Also, we needed to give our brains some time off in those nice comfy big chairs. We were both getting the feeling that we wouldn't mind leaving Madrid a little earlier than planned, and that some quality beach time sounded like a winner around now, so we went down to the Atocha station to see if we could find out more info on train schedules, as well as checking out the weather in our 2 possible destinations of San Sebastian or Nice. Once in Atocha, we found that nobody could give us international info, and that we'd most likely be going out of Chemartin (int'l station) anyway, so we quickly headed up there. The information people there were just as useless though, as the train schedules had all been changed but the computers weren't updated yet. So the only printouts we could obtain were only valid up until the 15th of June, and nobody knew when further info would be available! Dumb! So we checked on weather at an internet spot in the station, and given that both locations were having cold, partly cloudy forecasts, we decided to pick San Sebastian instead of Nice (since we liked being able to speak the language a little here in Spain, but neither of us speak a word of French). By the time we'd reached this decision, it was rather late, and we headed back to Atocha to get to our hotel. On the way, we stopped for Chinese food again (I feel like we've been doing that a lot lately, although it's very good). By the time we got back, it was almost midnight, and the one good thing we found was that it was much quieter out, as it was Sunday. So both of us slept a little better! |