Madrid was hot– in fact it seemed like the marriage of two of my favorite places: it was hot like AZ but looked like Costa Rica. I was immediatly struck at the similarities to Costa Rica. Apperently a bunch of the cultural stuff that I assumed was Costa Rican is actually just straight up Spanish. Like the little tienda’s could have come right out of Costa Rica– down to the Chinese person working in them. My Airbnb was about an hour outside of the city and was massive compared to the tiny room that I had in Berlin (with a shared bathroom which I hated). Saturday night when I got there I enjoyed doing my laundry and reveling in the air conditioning. Sunday I went to church and then went to El Reina Sofia to see Guernica. There was other stuff but that was mostly what I cared about. It was stunning– the black/ white/ grey newspaper colors thing really was incredible. I think my favorite part was looking at all the photos that were taken of how the painting progressed. He painted it in something like 6 quick weeks. It was amazing to see how much it changed and how many little tweaks there were as he went along and how right he was to change them. It looks so chaotic but there is balance and something appealing to the eye about it and each little choice he made brought it a little closer to that aesthetic balance. That night I watched this movie called Children of Men which was incredible– a meditation on faith but not just in God, on humanities collective ability to do good.

Monday I spent the day with Natali. We went to El Prado which was massive and I got to see some Goya and Las Meninas. I had forgotten what a robust painting lineage Spain had. So much weird stuff like Dali. Also art from all over is just weirder than people imagine, like the Garden of Earthly Delights. Lots of El Greco. It was great to have Natali as a tour guide as well as her art history friend. After the museum Natali and I got lunch and talked for a long time, again, gossiping about family and talking about our lives. After we walked around some more and then I went back to my Airbnb, exhausted.