Welcome to Madrid!
I finally met Mary today at Puerta del Sol, and a friend of hers, Andrei who is from Ukraine. As we did not know how everything went during the WYD event, we decided to do Route 1 in our guide and finally ended up the at the Thyssen Museum where we saw the exhibit of Christ's life. It was great to find out that Mary is an art student and thus, have great appreciaton of the arts -- I now have someone to talk and ask questions to! Isn't that great?
The exhibit room was so crowded with pilgrims that after seeing all the paintings, Mary and I decided to leave the place. Andrei decided to stay behind to see more although those other rooms in the museum were not for free viewing anymore. Our next stop was the Prado Museum which was one of the places I'm looking forward to see. Arriving at the place, the queue to the entrance was too long and had curled up already, yet it was fun to see everybody in groups, especially the Brazilians. I think that they are the most vivacious group there ever. Their flags were all over, although I did see a couple of Philippine flags, both carried by those from the homeland and from those in the US.
It took us almost two hours under the blistering sun to go inside. While waiting, a kind Madrilena gave us cool water to drink. Her water was obviously iced but because of the heat, turned water already. But that was fine with us because it was still cool! I tried to look for some people selling water along the road (like what we have back home) but I found no one until a little later.
We spent only around two hours inside the museum because there were just so many people (and because we have not eaten properly yet). When we went inside, we decided to go our separate ways and meet at the lobby later so we can save time and still be able to see the paintings each of us wanted to see. The main painting I wanted to see was that of Caravaggio's, the one lent by the Vatican itself for the event. The Entombment of Christ is a very large painting and it was very beautiful. Amazing how one person can do such painting. It was full of emotion and the people in the painting looks so real, even the ribs on Christ's body. *sigh*
I was also able to see paintings by Rubens (now I understand why his name is mentioned in many of the books I've read), Bosch (?), and many of El Greco's work. Maybe aside from the Caravaggio, I'm most impressed by El Greco's work. There are some work of his that I did not know, I'm familiar with. His paintings are also large but the colors, paints he used makes the subjects look real. I was itching to touch all of them!
Later, Mary found me and asked me if she can look at one more work and I'm glad I came because it was a painting I've already seen but did not really took time to understand. Before seeing that particular painting, I was already amazed by Patinir's Crossing of the River Styx and Bosch's Table of the Mortal Sins. What Mary pointed out to me was another work of Bosch which was The Garden of Earthly Delights. All these are Flemish paintings. I didn't know I could appreciate Flemish paintings until now.
Some of the other paintings I am actually glad to finally see are: Velasquez's Las Meninas, Ruben's The Three Graces, and Durer's Adam and Eve.
Our mini-garden spot
After having our late lunch at a local sandwich shop (and getting water from my extra food stub -- thanks, Nes!), we proceeded to Plaza Cibeles for the Opening Mass around 6 o'clock. We got a spot in a garden where we can see what's happening in a large TV screen. Mass started at around eight in the evening (but is still daylight), and ended quite a bit late because of the multitude of people who attended the opening mass. I was just amazed that far out as we are from the stage, the Communion had reached us! Unfortunately, neither Mary nor I understands Spanish that would make us understand much of what's being said during the mass. But it's okay. We just prayed.
We grabbed dinner at Gino's near Nuevos Ministerios (so far out from Cibeles) since we wanted to be as far away from the crowd. We just wanted to make sure that the place we're going to eat at still has a table for us and food to serve! Other places we went to had lots of people waiting for their turn to be served. After dinner, I arrived at the Pio XII around 1 o'clock in the morning already. So happy the gate is still open! :)
The pilgrims on their way home ...
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