What an interesting day

My family often tells the story of how one winter when we were in Saskatchewan my sister refused to put a jacket on because it was sunny out. My parents let her figure out for herself that it can be sunny and cold. I learned the opposite today. It can be cloudy and still ridiculously hot.

I went to the Prado in the morning. I didn't end up going to the Orsay by the way because the stupid thing was closed Mondays (grr) which means I have to visit it when I pass through Paris en route to Belgium in a few weeks. I MUST see the Orsay. It's the mothership for a little Impressionism fan like me. The Prado was my second favorite art gallery on this trip so far, after the Uffizi. I fell in love with El Greco. His paintings suck you in like a vaccum. There´s a ridiculously huge collection of Velasquezes and Goyas. Goya is neat because there's such contrast in his work. Some of it looks very Italian, there was a period of black work and some other stuff too. What I liked about the Prado was that most artists' had all their work grouped together so you could really notice this stuff. I like being able to see how an artist's career progressed. There was also a special Picasso exhibit and I have to say, I either love his stuff or hate it. Some of it just looks childish. They displayed some of the paintings that he reinterpreted in cubism and that was pretty cool. I loved the Prado so much more than the Louvre. The Louvre is impressive for its sheer size, but in terms of number of quality pieces, or at least quality in my opinion, other galleries are superior. With 60,000 pieces they can't all be masterpieces so there's a lot of sifting to be done. Not so with the Prado.

As usual after a gallery visit, I didn't feel like doing more sightseeing right away afterwards so I found a supermarket and bought some official backpacker food (bread and nutella) and went to the park to 'meditate' a bit. It was good and I've come to some conclusions. Some changes are going to be made when I return to Vancouver. Particularly in terms of how I approach people and how I let them approach me. I see some issues with how I do that now that need to change for the sake of my continued happiness and sanity.

Oh, I've also decided to write another novel. An idea came to me on the 16 hour trip to Madrid (yuck to that by the way), in much the same way that the idea for my first novel came to me. I won't divulge any details on a public blog but I'm excited about it and I'm excited to be excited about writing again. It's been too long since I've felt that urge inside of me.

Oh yes, I also stopped in Plaza de Colon to watch some football (soccer) on the big screens. I don't care much about soccer but the atmosphere is really cool. Spain was playing the Ukraine and kicked butt. It's cool to watch how excited people get, even over a game that was supposed to be a pretty easy win. They really REALLY like football here. And I got my very own World Cup face paint kit hehe. Who should I cheer for?