Prado & Play

We were excited to see the Prado on this gorgeous spring day and the Tintoretti exhibition. With a child, one has to go through a museum quicker than we would normally, but it was a good taste of some wonderful works of art.

Mozart spotted a few pictures from a match game we play with famous works of art which made her very excited. We always let her pick five post cards of the ones she likes best. There were also some artists doing copy work from the masters which she and all of us enjoyed watching. We found a great kids book there in Spanish about the museum and paintings by James Mayhew (whom she loves as she has the whole series in English). It is called Carlota y la princesa espanola. We also got a lovely coloring book of the great paintings.

It is a fantastic museum, but we also had a serendipitous sublime time afterwards as well. Mozart was like a filly let out of the stable on the fist sunny day after winter and was happy to be free to run here and there once out of the museum and make some noise. We heard a haunting,melodious violin and walked in that direction to see a street performer serenading the traffic and people passing by with an amped violin with classical music.

The grass was so green, the many tulips were so joyful, and the trees were budding out & blossoming. Mozart insisted on reading her book and tipping the violinist and we sat on a bench just enjoying the music and the city scene, uplifted by the magnificent art we had just seen.

Soon there was another family or two that joined us and one had a little girl just about Mozart’s size and soon they were playing together and dashing around, gabbing away in Spanish. Mozart shared her book with her and they colored the other one together. Later her mom gave them some soap bubbles to play with and they made friends with the dogs and owners walking by.

Meanwhile the heavenly music played on and the scene looked like it was out of a movie with the girls red clothes complementing the colors of the park. We were there two hours or more, lost in a timeless revery of an eternal spring momentin Madrid.

Finally, it was time to head home to the hotel and when we got near Mozart noticed a McDonalds just up the street from our hotel, so we indulged her and instead of tapas in Madrid we just had a bed picnic in our hotel room with a little Spanish TV and got to bed early for our long day ahead starting with a train to Malaga. We decided that it was worth getting up early to catch the much talked about thick hot chocolate and churros for breakfast.