Why I need a Smart Car while living on the South Side

More of Madrid

Yesterday we went to el Rastro, which is a huge flea market sort of thing where the streets are lined with booths of people selling things. Some of it is touristy stuff, but there was also quite a bit of clothing, jewelry, music, etc. There was even a guy with a big table of random computer parts, none of it in boxes. Bill could have set up shop there. ;) A couple places were even selling things like gas masks. I was tempted to buy one just so I could put it on and go around saying, "Are you my mommy?" It was definitely an interesting experience, but we were literally in a mob of people. You couldn't even stand and look at something without a hundred people knocking into you while you did. And since crowds are not my thing, after a while I'd just had enough.



Later on, we stopped by the Temple of Debod, which is an Egyptian temple from the 2nd century BC which was donated to Spain in 1968 so that it wouldn't be flooded by the Aswan Dam.









And one more thing... this is housing. Imagine what it must cost to live there.

Chinchón

We went to Chinchón yesterday for lunch. It was very old and beautiful with steep, winding streets and houses clustered together. They are famous for their local anisette. We stepped into a bakery while we were there which was filled with the smell of anise. Mmmm.



Street
White buildings
Everywhere are beautiful carved wooden doors.
View from the church
More of the view
Even more of the view
More still
A view with part of the church in it
The kitties of Chinchón say miao to all the American kitties reading this!
A nice building
An interesting street made of stairs
A yellow building
Bricks
Old door
Landscape with olive trees
More landscape

Reys del Palacio Real

Here's two of them anyway. The rest came out blurry because it was too dark. Next time I'll take more. I looked them up when I got home. It might be boring to some, but I love history!


Liuvigild, Leuvigild, Leovigild, or Leogild was King of the Visigoths from 569 to April 21, 586. He was born c. 525 and was the son of Amalaric and Chrotilda, daughter of Clovis.

Liuvigild was declared co-king with his brother Liuva I on the throne of the Visigoths after a short period of anarchy which followed the death of King Athanagild, who was a brother of them both. Both were Arian Christians. Liuva, who was favored by the Visigoth nobles, came to rule the Visigothic lands north of the Pyrenees, while Liuvigild ruled in Hispania.

Liuvigild married Athanagild's widow, Goisvintha. His first wife, Theodosia, the mother of his two sons, Hermenegild and Reccared, had died.

In 572 or 573 Liuva died. Liuvigild began his sole reign of the reunited Visigothic territories by seizing the Byzantine-ruled city of Córdoba, where the Byzantines had recently answered Athanagild's call for help by establishing a stretch of Byzantine territory in the southeast of the Iberian peninsula. Liuvigild also ousted the Germanic Suevi from their strongholds at León and Zamora, thus enlarging his kingdom to the north and west as well, but for another generation the eastern Roman emperor retained a base in southeastern Spain, which retained its old Roman name of Hispania Baetica.

Read the rest here if you're interested.


Liuva II, youthful son of Reccared, was king of the Visigoths in Hispania from 601 to 603. He succeeded Reccared at only eighteen years of age.

In the spring of 602, the Goth Witteric, one of the conspirators with Sunna de Mérida to reestablish Arianism in 589, was given command of the army to repulse the Byzantines. From his position of power at the head of the army, he surrounded himself with people in his confidence. When it came time to expel the Byzantines, Witteric instead used his troops to strike at the king (Spring 603). Invading the royal palace, and deposing the young king, he counted on the support of a faction of nobles in opposition to the dynasty of Leovigild. Witteric cut off the king's right hand and later had him condemned and executed (Summer 603).

Plaza Mayor

We went to see Hairspray today and didn't laugh at all the fat jokes. But we did get to walk around the Plaza Mayor a bit. Since it was dusk, the light wasn't very good for pictures, but I intend to be there again when the light is better. When I take pictures, they either give me weird looks or everyone starts looking in the direction of my camera. The latter is kind of amusing. Here I'm labeled a tourist, I'm sure, but I do the same thing at home.

I love how the sides of the building is painted.

The View

We are on the frontier of Madrid's urban sprawl. You can see nothing but construction all around.



And white, fluffy clouds!

Spanish Art

We went to the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia yesterday. I have no pictures, since picture taking was not allowed inside, and taking pictures of the outside of the building, like other people were doing, just seemed very uninteresting. We saw a lot of Picasso, Miro, and Dali, among others. Their most famous piece, I believe, is Guernica. It was interesting to see it in person. You can see where he'd drawn things, decided it wasn't quite right, and painted over them. There were also photos of the work in progress. I imagine it would have been even more impressive to see it in its original location, since it took up the entire wall. In the museum, it did not, and so it looked lesser with all the empty space around it.



I especially liked the Dali paintings. I've always loved Dali, but until you see them in person, you can't appreciate the detail that he put in them. When you take a picture of a painting and reduce it to fit in a book, for example, you cannot see the little, amazingly detailed, people which are about the height of your thumbnail. So much is lost in reproduction. I could have spent hours looking at all the detail in the paintings.

Looking at a lot of the other stuff, though, I thought to myself that I could never be an "artist." Most of Picasso's work is just ugly to me. The point of art for me is to make something attractive to look at, and his work is not attractive (apart from some of his older, less abstract work). Until I learned the story behind Guernica, I did not appreciate it. Later, I bought a poster of it, which I still have. But without that story, I just don't get it. It's not attractive. It's not compelling. It's just a bunch of ugly figures. And I'm torn on whether art is successful if it needs an explanation to be appreciated.

But it isn't just Picasso. A lot of the modern stuff is lost on me. And I am not an uneducated person. I have a degree in art. I took plenty of art history classes. And for the most part I loved it. But the modern stuff... even with the classes, I just don't get it. I don't see how putting a bunch of random trash together in a certain way is art. I don't see how painting canvasses a single color and putting it up on the wall is art. I don't see how pouring paint in random globs on the canvas is art. Some of the stuff that was in that museum (and other museums) I just shook my head at. Why was it there? Some of it could be interesting if it was in a practical setting, but not in a museum. Some of it would be tossed in the trash if someone found it outside of a museum.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm not a right-brained person that causes me not to get it. I'm not left-brained either. I always test exactly equal on both halves. But maybe you have to be way far on the right half to get that stuff. There were drawings on the walls that I would have crumpled up and thrown in the trash if I'd made them. I saw a painting of a cityscape. It was painterly, not exactly realistic. It didn't have every single detail. But there was enough that you could see the hundreds of buildings, the streets, etc. That took some effort. That took skill and patience and insight. And it was next to paintings that looked like random scribbles of paint which must have taken all of 15 minutes to throw together.

I love drawing and painting. And I don't get art. Is that a bad sign? :)

Plaza de Toros, etc.

I arrived in Spain exactly 1 day after I arrived at the airport (local times). Aaron has been working, so I haven't done much sightseeing yet. The area where he lives isn't exactly picturesque, as it's in the middle of a construction zone, so I haven't taken many pictures. Today, on our way to dinner, we passed the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, which is arguably the most famous bullring in the world.

The first thing I learned in Spain was that cream comes in boxes and is roughly the same state of solidity as ricotta cheese, but creamier in texture. Milk comes in the same kind of box, but it's liquid and works much like half-and-half. They also sell Belgian beer in the grocery store for 1 euro. The tap water here tastes better and the water pressure is much greater than at home, and yet if you order water in a restaurant, they serve you expensive bottled water.

Strangely, the Spanish don't do spicy food. Obscure quote of the day: "Even the bread is hot!"