Madrid, part 5: El Arte Infinito

We woke up Sunday morning with the beginnings of slight head colds. Nonetheless, we bravely -- some would say heroically -- ventured out in search of more fine art.

We faced more obstacles when the street in front of the Reina Sofia museum was blocked by a big footrace with hordes of cheering spectators waving Spanish flags (including what seemed like packs of protestors?) and no clear way through. Showing courage once again, we courageously... waited until a bunch of other people had gone ahead of us before nervously zipping across ourselves.

The Reina Sofia is a very Spain-focussed contemporary art museum in a converted old hospital with a fancy new building attached, featuring plenty of works by the great 20th-century surrealists and lots of historical context and documentary photography. Its main draw is Picasso's large painting Guernica, and we particularly enjoyed seeing works by Joan Miró (B) and Juan Gris (L). Plus, there was an interactive installation on the terrace that we got to walk through.

Between museums, we ate another lunch at an indoor market, where B notably had a pulpo empanada. With some time before our next art reservation, we went into the Naval Museum, which had lots of model ships and the oldest known map featuring the Americas.

Fading but still brave, we entered the last of the Big Three Madrid museums, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, which turned out to be quite large and maybe our favourite. Its private collection had lots of Dutch masters (including Rembrandt's famous self-portrait), El Greco, Caravaggio, a bunch of Rodin marble sculptures, some great paintings by Georgia O'Keefe, and some other interesting modern works. There was also an enormous curtain ballet backdrop by Dali and a beautiful visiting painting by Vermeer, View of Delft.

We detoured back through Retiro park again on our way home (where we found peacocks in a quiet manicured garden) and bravely got ice cream to soothe our slightly sore throats.