Go Back  Fodor's Travel Talk Forums > Destinations > Europe
Reload this Page >

Spain Newbies: Cordoba, Granada, Seville, Toledo, Madrid

Spain Newbies: Cordoba, Granada, Seville, Toledo, Madrid

Old Oct 31st, 2015, 05:24 AM
  #21  
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 5,934
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Fabulous trip report full of interesting details and observations!

About Plaza de la Corredera in Cordoba: <Turning a corner and entering the Plaza, we saw hundreds of people sitting at café tables covering the big plaza, laughing, shouting, eating, drinking, kids running around, teenagers hanging around doing their thing. Hey folks, its almost midnight! Why aren’t you all asleep?>
This goes on at least until three in the morning both here and in close by Plaza de las Tendillas, at least in the week-ends. Wonderful city!

And good to see you had a fine flamenco experience in Casa del Flamenco. Your two dancers seem to go way back together, here in a clip from 2008:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InvtEMKWcWk

And yes, the song/cante is considered the essential part of flamenco from where the rest grows. The dance is much about communication with the song and guitar (or also other instruments today), and it can be extremely powerful when this communication works. A couple of examples:
Joaquin Grilo and flamenco piano genious Dorantes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOjtXiPl8Rk
Rocío Molina and La Tremendita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97w_mvV7C9U
kimhe is offline  
Old Oct 31st, 2015, 07:49 AM
  #22  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 747
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Thanks Kimhe. The next night at Casa de la Memoria was even more powerful, will post more soon
EYWandBTV is offline  
Old Oct 31st, 2015, 08:43 AM
  #23  
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 5,934
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Looking forward to that.
kimhe is offline  
Old Oct 31st, 2015, 11:44 AM
  #24  
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 3,589
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Yes, we too enjoyed Casa del Flamenco performance. New experience and exciting. kimhe, surely you will list more performances on youtube. For which I thank you. Santa Marie Cathedral...amazing. Enjoyed walking through Jewish section.
Ozarksbill is offline  
Old Oct 31st, 2015, 02:58 PM
  #25  
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 3,695
Received 19 Likes on 4 Posts
Wonderful, descriptive report, as always.
Adelaidean is online now  
Old Nov 1st, 2015, 08:01 AM
  #26  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 747
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Wednesday Day 7 – more Sevilla

Oh what bliss, to wake up in Sevilla on a sunny morning! I love this city.

Another delicious breakfast at the Hotel Amadeus. This time on the roof terrace overlooking the skyline, Jacuzzi to the right of us (empty at this morning hour), sofas and tables with miniature kumquat (?) trees in front, the coffee and drinks bar to our left. Fueled with lots of fruit and bread and jam and cheese and croissants and café con leche, we headed out to the Alcazar.

First, a word about preprinted tickets with reserved time slots. It’s required for the Alcazar (and, separately, for the Palacio Real Alto inside the Alcazar if you wish to go there) in Seville as well as the Alhambra in Granada and the Prado in Madrid. We reserved the Alhambra two months ahead of time but we had our hotels reserve one day in advance for the other two.

Hint #5: reserve your tickets, with time slots, sufficiently in advance for the major sites which carefully manage the number of visitors entering the premises, such as the three mentioned above.

The Alcazar is a stone’s throw from the Plaza del Triunfo. What a beautiful and historically important public space this plaza is, with the Giralda, Cathedral, Archivo de Indias, the Ayuntamiento city hall and, nearby, the Alcazar.

Many visitors rank the Alcazar as the equal of the Alhambra. I would rank it 97.87352 per cent as magnificent as the Alhambra. They are both variations on the same theme, with the main part of the Alcazar having been constructed during the reign of Pedro I in the mid-1300s. It is perhaps the prime example of mudejar architecture, designed and built by Moorish craftsmen for Christian monarchs.

There are dozens of magnificent rooms in the palace complex, most well described in TRs and web sources so no need to describe them further. I’ll just mention our visit to the royal apartments still used from time to time by the king and queen today, the Palacio Real Alto. You can reserve your ticket ahead of time or buy it at the entrance on the second floor ( = “planta I”). Only 15 persons are permitted during the guided tour, which is given every 30 minutes. There were only two other people during our time slot, but in high season I am guessing it would be wise to reserve tickets ahead of time.

The main rooms in these royal apartments are not massive; their dimensions felt impressive but not oppressive. This was mudejar décor at its finest. As well, the original colors on the decorations of the upper walls and ceilings were intact, in contrast to the Alhambra, where many sections of the wall and ceiling ornamentation have lost their colors (but not the ceramic tile work on the lower walls, however; these retain their brilliance). Especially fine was the Sala de Audiencias, which today’s monarchs still use for official receptions.

After spending a couple of hours in the palace complex, we stepped outside, to the edge of the vast gardens, and had lunch on the outside terrace of the cafeteria. The choice of dishes is not huge here but we had a really good chicken curry, which was a welcome change of pace from jamon, cheese, and fried fish.

This was another “stop-the-clock-I-want-to-live-here-forever” moment. Dappled sunlight, royal gardens in front of us, tasty food, little kids talking with their parents around us, and … peacocks! Peacocks all over the place. The little girl next to us kept feeding them, tossing pieces of bread on the ground. One crumb of bread landed next to my foot and I had to fend off a starving peacock attack. They are beautiful creatures, but quite ill-tempered.

We returned to the palace, visited most of the rest of the rooms and hallways, then went out into the magnificent gardens. I am wearing out these superlative adjectives but I have no choice. We wandered all over the gardens, which have several different areas. Especially interesting was the Garden of the Grotesque and the water organ, powered by water moving through organ pipes, one of only four in the world. It plays every hour on the hour. We were lucky to pass by it just a few minutes before it played. Was it a transcendent experience? Er, no. It sounded like a primitive phonograph playing Dance of the Skeletons. But as water organs go, I guess it was pretty good. And fun to watch.

By this time it was mid-afternoon and our second flamenco performance at the Casa de la Memoria was scheduled at 6:00 p.m. (Bizarre time, like having Christmas dinner in July, but our hotel manager said more and more flamenco stages are cancelling their late evening performances because foreign tourists can’t stay up that late—that would be us—and instead they hold an early evening performance around 6:00 p.m.)

Here follow some details about the performance at the Casa de la Memoria. I am now a flamenco fan; this performance was even more riveting than that of the previous night. I am going to have to dig deep into my tool kit of adjectives to do justice to it.

Listed below are the songs/dances which we saw. I met the guitarist of the group after the performance and asked him the names of the dances and he kindly wrote them down for me. And, as kimhe has confirmed in his earlier comment on this TR, the central piece of the flamenco performance is the singer not the dancers, so these terms are actually names of types of songs. The dancer improvises along with the singer but I think the singer takes the lead in directing the spectacle. (I think that’s accurate, all corrections are welcome here.)

Dancers: Asunción Pérez "Choni" and David Pérez (I wonder if they are married, or brother and sister?)
Singer: Bernardo Miranda
Guitar: Jordi Flores

First song/dance: Taranto, danced by the woman. Alternating staccato, almost geometric movements and patterns of the arms and legs and then suddenly a pause for two seconds, followed by flowing, sinuous moves of the entire body, especially magical hand movements.

Second dance: Alegria—both the man and the woman, betwitching.

The dancers took a break and the singer sang two songs, malaguenas and abadolados.

Third dance: Bulerias—the man alone. This was the most extraordinary dance of the various dances we saw over the two nights. David Perez projected so much energy that at times I thought his body was going to explode. But then, at a certain moment, he would stop and take a certain pose and remain still for several seconds before moving again. At one point he stood still and leaned his body back almost 45 degrees, barely supported by one leg behind. He looked almost like a sculpture. Then he burst out of that position.

All along, of course, the singer was singing these difficult-to-describe flamenco songs, full of harshness, dissonance, half-tones, then sliding back into beautiful melodies.

At this point, the members of the audience—we were mainly a sedate Anglo-Saxon group of folks—were going wild, shouting, whooping, and clapping, and the performers seemed to pick up on this and ride the wave even higher.

When David Perez finally finished, I turned to partner and said “I’m exhausted, I need a drink!”

(If you want to get some sense of Perez’ performance, here’s a video from a flamenco festival where he performed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gRVycT5S_o

It occurs to me that those who really know flamenco might rank the dancers differently. The wildness of Perez’ performance impressed us most but the other dancers were saw during these two nights were probably showing great finesse and skill in movements which might not be as superficially striking as those of Perez. Must attend more flamenco to figure this out.

We filed out of the casa, our legs wobbly, and walked over to the Plaza de la Incarnacion to take a look at the “mushroom,” the Metropol Parasol. As we approached the plaza, we saw…walking toward us…was Asunción Pérez! She must have darted out to the plaza for an errand before the next show. I walked up and said “Gracias gracias por el espectaculo!” She was most gracious and hoped that we enjoyed it. I am in love.

The mushroom: About $100 million was spent on this thing, with huge cost overruns. We learned this earlier in the day from a disgruntled taxi driver. The goal allegedly was to rejuvenate the surrounding neighborhood. The huge, undulating construction is certainly an amazing thing but I don’t think the goal was reached. The main floor is a dull, open grey concrete expanse, with several big pillars holding up the mushroom.

Five kids were playing soccer using one of the pillars as the goal. Not many people around (it is Wednesday about 7:30 p.m.) The sign says there is a gastrobar on the roof of the mushroom. Oh good, let’s go up, have some gourmet tapas and drinks and look out over the city. Nope. Gastrobar closed. If you want to go up and just look, it will cost you 3 euros. Umph, we declined. Walked across the street, got some tasty roasted chestnuts, walked around the sidewalk stalls selling cheap Chinese scarves and whatnot, then walked down to our dinner place.

Dinner:

Bodega Gongora, Calle Albareda, off of Calle Sierpes. This bodega gave us a memorable goodbye meal for our last night in Sevilla. We sat at the outside street terrace (it is a pedestrian street so no worry about cars). Looking at my notes now I am amazed at our tapas consumption: thick creamy gazpacho, albondigas de choco (cuttlefish meatballs), flamenquines con aioli (pork loin nuggets stuffed with ham and cheese and fried with garlic mayonnaise sauce); a delicious, simple salad of tomato, raw sliced white onions, mild cubed white cheese, and oregano; bocaditos of pork filet with roquefort sauce on toast; spinach and chickpeas; cod cooked in tomato sauce; manzanillo, white wine, vodka tonic, Rue Vieja, and complimentary vino de naranjo to finish. Extraordinarily tasty.

We ambled away from Bodega Gongora, slowly going toward our hotel; turning a corner, we came across a young violinist in the street paying a beautiful violin version of the bittersweet adagio of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Above was a half moon. People slowly walking by, kids, parents, grandparents, couples, tossing money into his violin case. Stop The Clock I Want To Live Here Forever And Ever.

But I have said that already. Enough. Time to go to bed and prepare to leave Sevilla in the morning. Sniff.
EYWandBTV is offline  
Old Nov 1st, 2015, 08:52 AM
  #27  
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 250
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
You write so beautifully! Looking forward to the next installment.
Vonse is offline  
Old Nov 1st, 2015, 09:05 AM
  #28  
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 4,589
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Recently back from wonderful Seville and the delightful Amadeus hotel.

The Casa de Memoria was a real highlight of my 3 week trip...we sat in the centre seats in the front row and revelled in the power of the troup....Yolanda Osuna, Jesus Corbacho, Pedro Sanchez and Oscar de los Reyes (brilliant).

Also loved turning a corner to find flamenco in the street. Terrific city.

Thanks Kimhe for the recommendations and tha nks to E YWandBTV for the great
trip report.
immimi is offline  
Old Nov 1st, 2015, 03:12 PM
  #29  
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 10,265
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Great report, love all the details and the tips.
Leely2 is offline  
Old Nov 3rd, 2015, 05:53 PM
  #30  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 747
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Thursday Day 8: TOLEDO

We sadly left Sevilla Thursday for Toledo, via a change of trains at Madrid Atocha. Zooming north through La Mancha on the AVE (at 150 mph), I visited the café car for a sandwich around 11:00 a.m. It was full to bursting with our Spanish compatriots, drinking espresso, laughing, chatting away, as the olive fields buzzed past us. Gotta love this country.

A slight hiccup in the change of trains in Madrid at the Atocha station for the Toledo 30-minute train. At home, weeks before, my computer printer had not printed out the RENFE tickets completely, intact, one on each page. At first, the ticket checker was not going to let us on the train, but finally reason prevailed. Hence, Hint #6, below:

Hint #6: DO buy your RENFE train tickets ahead of time (I used loco2.com, very easy) to make sure you get a seat on popular trains and DO make sure your computer printer prints out the entire ticket (including RENFE ads), each on a single sheet of paper. Helps avoid hiccups.

Arrived Toledo, easy taxi to Posada de Manolo, one-half block from the cathedral. I must say, this little family-run posada was one of the reasons we loved Toledo so much, even if we only stayed there one night. Manolo and his wife Almudena run the hotel. His family bought the property in the 1970s, and he and his father totally renovated, actually rebuilt would be more accurate, the property in 2001-2002. But the structure goes back at least to 1480, when it first appears in city records, and in 1490 the owner received a rental license from the city!

Manolo and Almudena were terrific hosts, always happy, genuinely happy, to help out. We talked at length about the building (being history geeks). A friend of theirs did a lot of the ironwork, with the motif of dragons—the street sign, the handle of the front door, the iron stand for the guest book, and other things. The big carved bench in the foyer, now holding tourist brochures, has been in Manolo’s family for 250 years.

The top floor (3rd? I think) is the breakfast room and there is an outdoor terrace for breakfast as well, with views of the cathedral and, in the distance, the Alcazar (destroyed in fighting in the civil war and since rebuilt as the army museum).

Condensing our wanderings around Toledo, or else this TR will never be finished, we saw three outstanding sights:

>>Cathedral: more pleasing to me than Sevilla because the proportions seemed more human. The Toledo cathedral has a narrower nave and narrower total width and a greater elevation than the Sevilla cathedral. For me, it seemed to be easier to grasp as an architectural space, seemed to hang together better, if that makes any sense. The art masterpieces are mind-boggling. Magnificent El Greco in the priests’ changing room (a huge, magnificent space), The Disrobing of Christ.

>>El Transito Synagogue and Sephardic Museum: one of the few surviving synagogue structures in Spain. Beautiful synagogue and museum, with outdoor remembrance garden displaying many ancient Jewish burial stones.

>>El Greco’s Burial of Count Orgaz in Church of San Tome: a must-see masterpiece.

We spent the rest of our time in Toledo wandering the narrow streets and hanging out at the posada, chatting with Manolo and Almudena and asking them to correct our Spanish. For dinner, they recommended Ludena, a home cooking, “cocina casera” place. “It hasn’t changed since the 1950s,” said Almudena, and she was right.

Before going to Ludena for dinner, we stopped at a bar recommended by Almudena for its various vermouths, La Mona, just around the corner from the hotel. I had two different vermouths: Miro and Izaguirre. The latter I had “con sifon”—they squirt some CO2 into the drink to carbonate it, fizz it up. Both were excellent. Then on to dinner at Ludena.

Ludena is a couple of blocks from the cathedral. Its specialty is carcamusa, a mild stew of pork with a medium spicy tomato based sauce. We started off with tapas of red peppers stuffed with tuna and white anchovies in vinegar, followed by the carcamusa, accompanied by white whine and canas. Dessert: madillas (custards). Real comfort food, just like our Spanish mamas used to make, if we had Spanish mamas.

We felt we only scratched the surface of Toledo, but it was good to visit if only briefly. Friday we had an easy, quick train trip to Madrid.

Next up: MADRID
EYWandBTV is offline  
Old Nov 4th, 2015, 03:13 AM
  #31  
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 5,934
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Seems like you had a night for the memory book in Casa da la Memoria. And after great flamenco you definitely should be exhausted and need a drink ;-)

Both Asuncion Pérez "La Choni" and David Pérez performs as soloist on great stages and in the most important festivals. She won the revelation prize in the world's greatest flamenco festival, the Bienal de Flamenco in Sevilla, in 2008.
kimhe is offline  
Old Nov 4th, 2015, 03:16 AM
  #32  
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 5,934
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
... by the way, if they were married they wouldn't have the same last name. In Spain one carries the fathers and mothers first surname - in that order - for life. http://erikras.com/2009/01/28/whats-...ames-in-spain/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs
kimhe is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 03:44 AM
  #33  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 747
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Days 9, 10, 11: MADRID

We stayed at the NH Palacio de Tepa. We like to find hotels in historic buildings, and this one was superb. The building had fallen into great disrepair by the early 2000s. The NH chain purchased the structure and transformed the inside into a beautiful, elegant space.

Avertencia, Alert: the following few paragraphs are for history geeks, feel free to skip.

The palace was the home of Francisco Leandro Viana, first Conde de Tepa. It was built 1797 - 1808 on Calle San Sebastian, across from San Sebastian church. Our room looked out on the church façade, to the statue of poor, punctured Saint Sebastian. The Conde de Tepa served as a financial administrator for the colonial government in the Philippines and later as a judge in Mexico. He returned to Spain in 1777, becoming First Minister of the Council of the Indies.

The building was designed Jorge Duran and, later, Juan de Villanueva, architect of the Prado, the Royal Botanical Gardens, and the Royal Observatory.

Settling into Madrid … a very brief taste of the city. We only had two nights in Madrid before our departure for the States. We just wanted to enjoy two or three things slowly, then walk around and not do too much sightseeing. So our choices were …

>>>Plaza Mayor with GinTonics, watching the crowds.

>>>Guided tour and dinner at Botin – or, to use the complete name, Restaurante Sobrino de Botin: weeks before, we had reserved a 7:00 pm tour with Botin Experience. This would give us a guided tour of the place, with lots of background history, followed by a 6-course dinner. Our guide met us out front, ushered us into the front room and sat us down for an introductory glass of fino. Out came the owner, Antonio Gonzalez Martin, son of Emilio Gonzalez and Amparo Martin. The Gonzalez family purchased the restaurant in the late 19th century.

Sr. Gonzalez told our guide “don’t seat them here, seat them over there, it’s much more comfortable.” He was a very distinguished looking gentleman and he was carefully checking details around the first floor, getting ready for the 8:00 p.m. opening.

Botin barely survived the Civil War years. Leftist Republican troops were about to seize Emilio, a “capitalist businessman,” but Amparo dissuaded them with a promise to feed them for free as long as they wanted. Franco’s Nationalist forces were bombarding this part of Madrid. The building next door to Botin was bombed but Botin emerged from the war unscathed.

The building dates from the late 16th centry. A Frenchman, Jean Botin, opened the restaurant in 1725. (He had no children; his nephew inherited the restaurant, hence the name “Sobrino de Botin”.) This part of Madrid was growing rapidly, just outside the area of the old city walls. The walls had been taken down in previous decades and the large stone blocks were used for the foundations of the houses on this street, the Calle de Cuchilleros (Cutlers) and neighboring streets. The foundation stones are quite visible at the sidewalk level.

In 1725, the restaurant used its stone oven to roast meat which customers brought in. Only later did the restaurant actually use a menu and provide its own meat for the entrees. Gradually it expanded over four floors of the old building. It still uses the oven built in 1725.

We visited each floor, going down to the very bottom level, seeing the original foundations of the building. These are big, jagged stones, unlike the foundation stones at street level, and our guide said they are similar to the remaining foundations of the original Moorish walls of Madrid (the city was a small settlement, not very important during the Moorish era).

Hemingway loved Botin, ate there often, and liked to go into the kitchen to try to make paella. The staff tolerated this, but his paella was not very good. Our guide pointed out the small corner table which Hemingway preferred. Above it was a letter of appreciation from Nancy Reagan following her dinner in the restaurant with Queen Sofia (no comments, please, this is a non-political TR).

It was now two minutes before 8:00 p.m. and the front doors were about to open and the hordes enter. We were thinking about our six-course dinner. Then our guide asked “Would you like to dine at Hemingway’s table?” Well, sure!

Dinner: must be candid, it was only so-so. A variety of things from mushrooms to the famous suckling pig. But we did not expect a gourmet experience, we went to explore a piece of Madrid’s history and it was definitely worth it.

>>>The Prado. Somewhere, one of my guidebooks says something like “the Prado has the greatest collection of classical European painting in the world.” To which I say: YES! Plus, the entire complex is magnificent, and has been thoughtfully upgraded during a major expansion project in the late 1990s.

We focused on three geniuses: Velazquez, El Greco, and Goya. Velazquez’ “Las Meninas” seemed to have a vast magnetic field, pulling in dozens and dozens of admirers, transfixed by this amazing, complex painting. And in the big oval gallery, this work was surrounded by Velazquez’ majestic portraits of various kings, queens, and infantes on horseback.

The El Grecos were luminescent. How did he make paint and canvas convey this intense spiritual light?

We then moved on to the Goyas, ending our too-brief three-hour visit with the Black Paintings. Um. Poor planning, we should have begun with the Black Paintings then end with the luminescent El Grecos. The Black Paintings convey such a feeling of pain and despair, especially the centrally positioned painting of the little dog, drowning. We did not feel chipper when we left the gallery.

But emerging into the sunlight, we knew that we had visited one of the world’s greatest art collections, and we had only touched the surface.

>>>The Palacio Real: a mixed experience for us. The huge entrance staircase space was grand, but the following rooms seemed masses of overdone, un-elegant, unimaginative 19th century reworking of the 18th century designs of Charles III’s era. In retrospect, eminently skippable, IMHO … YMMV.

For our final night in Spain we decided to eat simply, drink little, and go to bed early to prepare for the flight the following morning. After walking around the Plaza Santa Ana (and unknowingly walking by Cerveceria Alemana, another Hemingway haunt we were later told), we ducked into a little tapas bar right next to the hotel, on the Plaza del Angel. This was the Golfo de Bizkaia.

The Golfo de Bizkaia is a Basque tapas bar. We had a long chat with our waitress, a student of history preparing for her degree as a high school teacher. We did not know the routine of Basque tapas, but the tapas jefe told us to take as many little plates as we wanted from the bar and later he would count the toothpicks on our plates and calculate the bill.

This was an excellent, simple dinner of canas, GinTonics, and tapas: pimientos stuffed with tuna, sardines with tomato and chopped pine nuts, tuna with a little vinegar and a sort of white caviar topping (? Is there such a thing as white caviar?), a tiny pork meatloaf “sandwich” in between two discs of crunchy parmigiano, salmon with chopped onion and dill, and a dessert of goxua, pronounced GO-shwah, a kind of flan with some sponge cake and a crunchy caramelized topping. Yum. I do not ever want to go home.

But we did go home the next morning, an easy flight to Newark, a tedious 6-hour layover, then a quick flight back to Burlington, Vermont.

General impressions of our first exposure to Spain: the gracious, courteous, friendly people; the many layers of history, especially in Andalucia with the strong Moorish heritage; the stunning architecture and works of art; and tapas tapas tapas. Time to start planning for next year…
EYWandBTV is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 07:40 AM
  #34  
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 15,729
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Thanks for the report....
Glad to see another " convert" to Spain , our favorite ( yearly) destination since 2007.
danon is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 08:43 AM
  #35  
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 5,381
Likes: 0
Received 8 Likes on 1 Post
Thanks once again for the great report, including the historical asides.

We enjoyed the Royal Palace, ostentatious as it may have been, but I get your point.

Goya's black painting are pretty depressing. That poor dog is terrifying, worse perhaps than Saturn Devouring his Son. Even his early paintings had a dark side:
http://biblioklept.org/2013/06/21/ri...cking-a-coach/

Somehow we finished our visit down at The Garden of Earthly Delights, which was uplifting in a way, compared to that dog. At least you could spend a lot more time looking at it in fascination.

Glad you enjoyed your trip!
Nelson is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 10:43 AM
  #36  
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 10,263
Likes: 0
Received 21 Likes on 2 Posts
"In retrospect, eminently skippable..."

It's funny...We all loved the Royal Palace. That's why I love trip reports..so many varying opinions of the same thing.

Goya also didn't do it for me...and Nelson, The Garden of Earthly Delights was my favorite Prado painting. El Bosco rocks...in a rather bizarre way.

maitaitom is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 11:01 AM
  #37  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 747
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Yes, we all can agree on one big thing: Spain is not a bland country.
EYWandBTV is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 11:11 AM
  #38  
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 250
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
I'm so sorry your trip report has to end!
Vonse is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 12:54 PM
  #39  
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 10,263
Likes: 0
Received 21 Likes on 2 Posts
"Yes, we all can agree on one big thing: Spain is not a bland country."

Si

maitaitom is offline  
Old Nov 6th, 2015, 02:30 PM
  #40  
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 15,729
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
"At the age of 75, alone and in mental and physical despair, he completed the work as one of his 14 Black Paintings,[note 2] all of which were executed in oil directly onto the plaster walls of his house. Goya did not intend for the paintings to be exhibited, did not write of them,[note 3] and likely never spoke of them.[35] It was not until around 1874, some 50 years after his death, that they were taken down and transferred to a canvas support." Many of the works were significantly altered during the restoration, and in the words of Arthur Lubow what remain are "at best a crude facsimile of what Goya painted."

Interesting info. about Black Paintings.
danon is offline  

Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Manage Preferences - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information -