Knowmark Travelblog: Madrid 2003: Wednesday, October 22

Museo Nacional del Prado

Another beautiful day in Madrid (2.5 on the Knowmark Weather Scale) - mostly sunny, with the mercury hitting the high teens. Today´s main activity was visiting El Prado. It is stunning! Tomorrow we are back to the same venue for the special exhibit - Manet en el Prado. We could see the Manet exhibition today (through various doors) and could have toured on the same ticket, but it would have been too much for our brains and our bodies!

We were pleasantly surprised to find that photographs are allowed in El Prado (no flash, of course). This is very unusual in our limited experience. So, we tried to take advantage of the opportunity to photograph some of the world's great art (see photos below). Having to shoot in available light meant that many of our shots are not publishable (and some of the ones shown aren't as sharp as they might be), but we were able to cull a few good examples from the dozens that we shot. Unfortunately, photographs are not allowed at the special Manet exhibit, so you will have to settle for our impressions (lame humour, that!) of those.

After a longish day at El Prado, we Metro'd back home and had a late (after 4pm) menú del día at Taberna Ultreya. Calamares (absolutely delicious) and jamón for Steve; pimientos de piquillo (which Susan loves) and jamón for Susan. This was our first actual meal here, and it was excellent. Later we went to CyberFutur@ to upload some photos, etc. Because of the long day and late lunch, we didn't make any tapas stops tonight, settling for a very light snack in our apartment.