(Our Favorite Photos of Spain)
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(top) Wx4 staff is way out of its depth when it comes to art appreciation, but as so many people have said before us: We may not know art, but we know what we like.
A case in point is the above portions of a three part masterpiece by Hieronymous Bosch that we happened upon in Madrid's Museo Nacional del Prado: He painted the Garden of Earthly Delights in 1504, and it was so out of character from what the other old masters were doing at the time that it took 400 years for the work to find true followers: the post-WW 1 Surrealist movement; later, the New Age crowd. Now, even though few of us on the Wx4 staff even have the capability to Crayola inside the lines, we nevertheless were floored by El Bosch's creation. At a high intellectual level, we really can't say why we instantly recognized a previously unknown-to-us painting as one of the great works of all time, but we did. Likewise, we can't tell you exactly why Thomas Kinkade (the for-some-reason-popular Painter of Light) blows as an artist, but he does. In summary: A night class in art appreciation might help us to come across as less doofus-esque here, but hey, like many foamers who are content to prattle-on in ignorance about professional railroading, we're happy as-is.
Room with a view (left): Toledo's Cathedral (which took 266 years to build, starting in 1226) from our hotel.
(below) Staff believes that we found the prototype for the Airstream trailer at the Palacio Real (National Palace) in Madrid.
Granada's world-famous Alhambra is the finest extant example of a Moorish palace. After Ferdinand and Isabella kicked the Moors out of the place, and Spain, in 1492 (a busy year for them), the buildings were appropriated and added on to by the Catholic Church and the Spanish aristocracy. Eventually, it largely fell into disuse until the early 19th century, when Washington Irving, the American writer, took an extended stay here, causing the place to be re-discovered.
