Then it was on to Madrid! The GPS was helpful and accurate until we go into the city, at which point it began a game of "almost there" with us. We were going to head to the hotel, leave our luggage, then drive the car to the Hertz place. After getting stuck in Madrid traffic and having the GPS move the hotel's location around on us, we decided to head straight to Hertz. This time the GPS didn't outright lie to us and we made it to the underground parking garage, dropped off the car, and took a cab, driven by the slowest cab driver in Madrid, back to our hotel.
On the way, we saw a couple of mounted police officers, and this is when Cielo decided she wanted to live in Madrid when she grows up (Istanbul is her second choice, because of the cats).
Since we were only going to be in Madrid for a few days, we knew we had to focus on some "must see" items. That included the Reina Sophia museum on our first day.
The Reina Sophia is fantastic, and you can take pictures in almost every gallery. They had a special show going on of the work of Yayoi Kusama, a great Japanese artist who has been working since the 1950s. We only have a few photos of her work to share, and it's hard to get across how varied (and cool) the work they had on display was.
This room was dark except for thousands of lights suspended from the ceiling. To heighten the effect, the walkway is shiny black tile, and it's surrounded by shallow pools of water that are even more reflective. When Eero and Vernon went into the room, Eero didn't notice the water, and spent the rest of our time at the museum with a soggy shoe on.
Eero asked to have his picture taken with this painting because "it looks like 3D!" The vibrant color really was confusing to the eyes.
He also really liked Kusama's giant polka-dotted balls. He was of the opinion that the circles on the floor were the shadows of the balls.
This is another room in the Kusama exhibit, but these aren't lights. They're fluorescent inventory stickers illuminated by black lights. They're applied throughly throughout the room, even on the fire extinguisher on the wall.
The museum is huge, with several levels. And it has cool glass elevators.
Upstairs, there was a display of Soviet propaganda and Socialist Realism works. Eero found this movie of Russian workers at a mine very interesting (there was another place showing Hitchcock's Rear Window, which we also watched for a while).
This is the work of Lygia Pape - each of those little icons is a distinct shape. We thought it looked like the pieces of a really interesting board game.
The architecture of the Reina Sophia is its own art as well. This is one of the long hallways that surround an inner courtyard.
Even the bathroom stall locks are stylin'
