January 28

We went to the Museo Sorolla today, which is the house where the impressionistic artist Sorolla lived, turned into a museum. It was amazing. They had a lot of his original furnishings, although they had removed some of them so people could walk around, and the walls were covered with his paintings. You could even see his studio where there were still his paintbrushes sitting on the table. I liked the art. It was something I could identify without a lot of interpretation and personal inflection and all that crap that modern art is supposed to be. He painted a lot of really wonderful water and beach scenes. One of my favorites was a group of people playing instruments out in the garden. The house is huge, and there’s a really exquisite garden outside with statues and a water fountain and everything. The stairs and a lot of the walls surrounding the yard have little mosaic-like tiles, and there are iron coats of arms on one of the walls above a bench. It was hard to believe someone actually lived there, and not very long ago. It was very cool.
After that we went back to the Parque del Retiro. It was so warm today, I took my coat off for a little bit. Then the wind picked back up again. But it doesn’t feel like January at all!
I’m going to go mosey over to the internet café now. I hope it’s not closed for siesta. It is so weird to me that stores are closed for the afternoon. Oh well, it’s not very far away; if it’s closed I’ll just walk back.
I think we’re going to go to a flamenco show tonight around 10:3. That should be fun. I hope it doesn’t go too late. I want to catch up a little on my sleep.
Hopefully I can post these today!
Bye,
Bethany