Madrid

Now that the Israel blogging is done, I need to rewind to the middle of July.  I was on a couple of days off and I got a call in the morning from the bid service to see if I was interested in picking up a Madrid trip for that evening.  I had nothing going on, so I took the trip.

It was kind of a low key affair.  I got to fly with my friend Juan.  He and his wife Lisa, also a flight attendant, are good friends and live a few miles away.

We arrived into Barajas airport a little late, but still got the hotel by late morning.  Juan was meeting up with some friends and the rest of the flight attendants were going to go out to dinner with the pilots.  I was going to meet up with them, but I decided instead to go to the Thyssen Museum.  It was the one major art museum I had not visited (the other two being the Prado and the Reina Sofia).  Together, the three make up the "Golden Triangle" of art for Madrid.  It fills the gaps where the other two leave off: mainly it has a early Italian, English, Dutch and German works, and more contemporary art from the first part of the 20th century.

Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza was the owner of most of the works, which were part of his private collection in the 1920s.  Where as most European works were winding up in American collections, Baron Thyssen took advantage of the Great Depression and broke former American millionaires who were desperate to unload their collections.  The Baron's son and his trophy wife, a former Miss Spain, turned the collection into a public museum in 1992.

I was most impressed with the Contemporary works.  They had a nice collection of artists including Jackson Pollack, Georgia O'Keefe, Roy Lichtenstein, Dali, Picasso, etc.  Lichtenstein was the artist who's pop culture paintings resembled comic strips (you may recall one of his pieces was on display at the World Trade Center and was destroyed when the buildings were brought down on September 11th.).

I also enjoyed looking at all the religious themed work from the 14th and 15th century.  Having just returned from Israel, it was another perspective on major Christian events.

After spending a couple of hours at the Thyssen, I made my way down Paseo de Prado.  The whole city of Madrid was in the throws of World Cup Fever, with Spain making it to the finals which were to be played the day after we got home.  (Incidentally, my friend Lisa was there the night of the victory and she said it was insane with people in a state of euphoria).  All the statues were draped in the Spanish flags in support of the soccer team.

I decided I wanted a little something to commemorate the World Cup so I headed back to the hotel via Puerto de Alcala, a shopping district.  Everything was so expensive.  I found a jersey at Corte Ingles for about 100 Euros and even a T-shirt at the Hard Rock was 50 Euros.  I'm not that big of a fan so I passed.  I am sure I will go back soon and will have ample opportunity to find something.  Now that they have won the World Cup, I imagine there is probably even more merchandise.

On the flight home we had a rather personable young lad named Michael who took an interest in the cabin crew.  He must have drank about 5 or 6 sodas on the flight home, but I think he was just looking for an excuse to come to the galley to talk to us.  When I woke up from my break in the bunks, he was in the back helping set up for the follow on service and he helped Billy, our coach galley, count and inventory all the liquor. I let him put on my topper and walk thru the aisle picking up garbage.  I told Michael to make sure he smiled and said "thank you" to everyone that gave him trash.  I emailed the picture to his mother later and she wrote back that out of the entire Mediterranean vacation, he told everyone picking up trash on the plane was his favorite part.  Go figure!