We had a team meeting in the morning. There were two questions, should we extend our stay a day to make up for yesterday, and what should we do today. The answer to the first question was No, and the vote was 4-0 to visit the Prado.
We started out at the Royal Palace again, and while Kit and Stephen had toured the grounds we had not, so before heading down the hill to the Prado we did a quick tour of the grounds of the palace and the adjoining Cathedral.
The Palace is immense with over 3000 rooms. It shares a large square on one side with a Cathedral. We feel bad that Kit and Stephen missed their tour as it was on their bucket list for the trip.
It was a bit of a long walk to the Prado, and the third time Ton and I had made it. The Prado is one of the great museums of the world, and an incredible collection of art. It is also huge. The original building was built in 1819 to display the royal collection of art.
We spent 5 hours touring the galleries and probably did not see half of the displays. They have an incredible collection of paintings by Reubens and other Dutch and Flemish masters due to the Netherlands being ruled by the Spanish during one of the great periods of Dutch and Flemish art.
As you would expect there is a huge collection of Spanish paintings including Goya and El Greco (technically born in Greece hence the name). We walked ourselves into the ground because around every corner there was another fantastic gallery with new art to take in.
Ton took a couple of pictures early on, but we were then informed there were no photographs allowed. Afterwards we all decided that there is far too much to see in one day. Museums like this are best absorbed in 2 or 3 hour increments before both your feet and your brain get tired. All of us were tired after about 3 hours, but no one wanted to be the first to admit it. As soon as Ton asked if it was time to leave all three of us said yes immediately.
Fortunately, the Metro was running and the trip home was uneventful. The evening was spent doing some chores and sharing a nice dinner prepared by Kit.
