Mr Peabody & Me

This blog is my own personal Wayback Machine. I re-read the entries from my first week in Paris last April, and it was an eyeopener. I won’t be bringing my down coat or raincoat or black mohair vest. Only one hat (wolfie) and a pair of mittens. No fancy Cole Haan walking shoes, though they are adorable.  Just two pairs of chucks, in B&W and pink.

I pulled out my clothes –  one pair each skinny black, gray, and blue jeans and two hoodies, plus teeshirts. More pattern in the tees this trip, less black. Pops of bright pink and bold socks. I remember getting so thirsty for color last time.
As I pulled my prospective wardrobe out, I tried things on. Wanted to be certain I could squeeze into it all. I’ve been living in yoga pants and loose long sleeve teeshirts.  Painting and exercise are the main reason I get out of pajamas, and neither activities require dressing up.

I might as well admit I’ve been on a diet and exercise binge since January – in training for galloping around Madrid and climbing those notorious hills in Lisbon. Plus, being able to tell whether my bellybutton is an innie or an outie because my teeshirt is so tight is not a good look on a lady of my mature years.

Well, dang if it didn’t pay off. Everything fit. Even shirts that I couldn’t wear last summer because they clung too tightly to my midsection fit just fine.  This means I get to wear my Voodoo Doughnut tee (Worth the Weight) and my Aloha Cowboy tee and red Gunshow tee (Defend Southern Food).  So fun! It boosted my morning mood from pleasant into giddy-with-glee territory.

This afternoon my daughter came by to teach me and her dad how to wrangle the Google Hangout app, so we can text and video chat and not drop a fortune.  I’ll cut off cellular access and restrict myself to wifi at the end of the day. For years. travel meant I basically went off the grid. I’ll kind of miss being utterly unplugged, but the blog is worth it. It’s more like the journals I kept in the 80s and the long emails I used to send to Robert than killing time chasing butterflies on the ‘Net.

What Was I Thinking?

I had a bout of pre-trip anxiety yesterday. I always go through a stretch of moody days where I can’t remember why I wanted to go on a long trip far away. My mind runs like this  I’m not ready. I should study more history. The journey will exhaust me. I need to learn Portuguese. Some calamity – from stolen purse to psychotic landlord to broken leg – will befall me. Grumble grumble. Who wants to eat hot squid sandwiches and look at gloomy Spanish art anyway?

I do. And I will.

This has happened like clockwork, about month before every long-awaited trip. It’s  predictable and look, it’s right on time. My policy is to note my glum mood  and let it pass by, like clouds over the sun. I keep calm and carry on with my lists, in the sure and certain knowledge when I get on the plane I’ll be ready for adventure.  It isn’t important whether or not it’s the adventure I have so carefully planned. In the immortal words of Rick Steves, if something is not to my liking, I can change my liking.

I have lost my passport, been targeted by a team of pickpockets, been spat at by a gypsy in Venice, passed a gallstone in a Paris museum, lost my way on foot in the dark of night, and arrived after a weary journey to find my accommodations uninhabitable. At the time I was too busy figuring out how to deal with the problem to be glum. In retrospect what I took away was confidence in my ability to adapt and thrive under all circumstances. Not a bad souvenir.

Holding Out For A Hero

One of the pleasures of trip anticipation is  reading.  Blogs posts and travel sites for real time, boots on the ground information and insights, but also histories, biographies, and novels.  I came across a bio of Vasco de Gama, who, in my hazy grade school memory, was a bold seafarer and explorer. Turns out he was also a vicious, bloodthirsty bastard. A man of appalling and horrifying acts of torture and vengeance. Take this example:

“After demanding the expulsion of Muslims from Calicut to the Zamorin Hindu, the latter sent the high priest Talappana Namboothiri (the very same person who conducted da Gama to the Zamorin’s chamber during his much celebrated first visit to Calicut in May 1498) for talks. Da Gama called him a spy, ordered the priests’ lips and ears to be cut off and after sewing a pair of dog’s ears to his head, sent him away.”

I thought I’d visit his tomb to pay homage to his nautical prowess. Turns out I’ll be going to make sure he’s still dead.

Ever hopeful, I turned to an audio book biography Isabella, Warrior Queen. More mayhem. I am all for strong female role models,  but when I discover she invented the Inquisition, I’m outta there.

On the whole, I prefer the lives of the painters. Like, say, Diego Velasquez or Sofonisba Anguissola. Not that artists don’t get up to mischief, but it isn’t havoc on the grand scale that royalty and their sanctioned pirates tend to wreak.

Q & A Success

Started posting on questions on the TripAdvisor Madrid Forum this week. I had great luck on the Paris board. Lots of helpful strategic info. One of my favorite replies linked to a Youtube site that had homemade videos of just the Louvre ceilings. Amazing and inspirational. I looked up the whole time I was there and was dazzled.

On the Madrid forum, 90% of the questions are the cheapest way to get from the airport, how to get soccer tickets, restaurant recs, best hotel at the cheapest price, and the intricacies of buying railroad tickets online. I figured my questions about art  would be a welcome change or there would be crickets.

I hit the jackpot! Art lovers on Tripadvisor who have been or are living in Madrid came out of the woodwork. One great tip was a link to a blog “Every Museum in Madrid” – a kindred spirit who lived there in 2012 and explored them all. Got some excellent leads on art in churches, plus this tantalizing exhibition –

‘A Su Imagen’ is a selection of around 100 pieces of great quality and artistic value (Rubens, Murillo, Goya, Velázquez, Valdés Leal, Cranach) These are works covering a large period of time –from the 10th to the 20th century– that come from 22 dioceses and from public and private collections. Until 12 April 2015.

 

Note the closing date, which moves it up in priority. I probably would’ve missed it, blinded by the glories of the Prado. Now I have it plugged in on my Madrid day by day calendar.

I may not be able to pry myself out of the San Francisco El Grande Basilica, it looks so luscious. I Googled Almudena Cathedral and somehow ended up watching a video snippet of the royal wedding there. The dresses of the maids of honor looked like something out of a Velásquez court painting. And I can’t wait to visit Goya’s tomb in San Antonio de la Florida. I hope it is permitted to leave a little sketch or a very small paint brush. You can recognize the tomb of Fra Angelica in Rome just looking for the scraps of sketches, pencil stubs and tiny brushes, little offerings from artists paying him homage.

Prepping for Madrid

I’ll be landing at Barajas  airport in 87 days.

I’ve fired up the app https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dreamdays-countdown-to-days/id585947384?mt=8 that does a automatic countdown.  When I peek at it, I get a little frisson of anticipatory pleasure. The Mary Cassatt painting of a matador in his suit of lights is my Dreamdays trip image. Is he lighting up in the spirit of a final smoke before the firing squad, or in a post-coital mood, spent with relief at surviving his bullfight? Now that the holidays are over, I’m buckling down to research,  accumulating possibilities for my day by day planner, and pre-booking tickets and museum passes.

Most of the museums I plan to see have pages on Facebook and I spent a happy couple of hours making a new Madrid/Lisbon interest list for my newsfeed. I’m now getting updates that give me glimpses of the paintings and treasures I’ll be seeing in person. And hooray for that handy ‘translate’ tab at the bottom of foreign language posts. It’s not perfect, but I get the gist.

Filled in the April day-by-day calendar with preliminary excursions and quickly realized there won’t be enough hours in the days or days in the month to fit in everything I’d like to see. Decisions must be made – El Escorial or the Royal Palace? I’ll take those kinds of inquiries to www.TripAdvisor.com which has never failed to give me cogent advice.

Figuring out which days museums are closed, what holiday to be aware of, the best days and times to visit is a lovely puzzle. I like having rain vs shine options too. Getting those all-important museum passes that permit me to bypass lines will gain me time that otherwise I might have squandered. I’ve booked one tour, with Context Travel. I’ve had excellent experiences with them in the Vatican Museum and Rembrandt’s House in Amsterdam.

I yearned to stay at the Hotel Orfila for my last five days in Madrid, but it’s really pricey, and I worried it couldn’t possibly be as lovely as I imagined. Then I came across this on the Wendy Perrin travel site: “Best bang-for-your-buck hotel -Orfila, a 32-room hotel housed in a nineteenth-century palace that feels more like a family home than a five-star Relais & Chateaux property. It is located only 15 minutes by foot from the Prado Museum in a quiet, mostly residential neighborhood. Rooms are furnished in top-quality antiques that the owner has been collecting for years, and there is a beautiful garden for guests to enjoy. It’s the kind of place where you get much more than you pay for.” That last sentence pushed me over the edge, and I found a ‘four days for the price of one’ deal, and booked it. Okay it didn’t push, I gladly jumped. Wouldn’t you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPZw-sbU1SA

Practiced my Spanish on Duolingo, something I’ve promised myself to do five days a week until I leave. It’s day 2.

 

 

 

 

Chicago Museums x 2

Back from Chicago with two museum visits. First, a Sunday trip to the Museum of Science + Industry. I didn’t pre-book my tickets online, my usual MO, and the line to buy tickets from personnel at counters was jammed with a wait of 45-60 minutes, winding through the ubiquitous post stanchions and retractable belt barriers. I noticed a bank of automatic ticket dispensers directly across the main hall. Despite museum aides beckoning to visitors, that line held fewer than a dozen people and I had my tickets in hand in five minutes. The ticket machines were touchscreen, simple to operate, easy to understand and, dare I say it, foolproof. I’ll keep an eye out for that alternative in other museums.

Christmas holiday plus kid-centric museum equals massive squealing crowds, but they go where they are pointed. I used one of my favorite strategies, starting on the third floor and working my way down. Bypassing the obvious entry point bought us a good two hours of relatively uncrowded museum-going pleasure. Suspended at the third floor eye level, aircraft – from the Wright Flyer, to a German Stuka, to a United 727 – celebrated the audacity of humans taking to the air. Displays of vintage scientific instruments were captivating; gleaming, elegant, and sleek.

My favorite exhibition was 80 at 80. http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/80-at-80/ I was mesmerized by the quirky video installation: Maarten Baas’ “Sweepers Clock” that shows men keeping time by sweeping garbage laid out in the shape of clock hands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXNT4T56EmM

The best (cleanest, functioning, and no lines) women’s restroom was just off the submarine exhibit. The worst (crowded, dirty, many out-of-order stalls) was on the main floor off the food court. Avoiding the Disney ‘exhibit’ and touring the submarine U-boat was another useful strategy. The U-boat, also a designated war memorial, was well presented with sound/light enhancements and an excellent guide. Fascinating.

I sadly underestimated how long I’d want to gaze at the treasure trove that is the Art Institute of Chicago. Five hours went by in a blink. A single exhibit of Italian drawings kept me enthralled for the first two hours. http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/strokes-genius-italian-drawings-goldman-collection

Met Robert for our traditional Terzo Piano lunch, then sprinted back, aware of time running out. I dashed through European paintings and sculpture, keeping an eye out for boxes, reliquaries, and anything made of terracotta  and porcelain, in every room I ventured through.

If I am honest, I was offended by the artist using stock news photos of people falling to their death, indifferent to the focus: Lucy McKenzie, and wished there was more to the Ethel Stein, Master Weaver exhibit.

I lost track of time in the glory that is Roman and Greek statuary.

Back to the drawings, where I spent my remaining time sketching a kneeling slave, a bearded saint, and this enchanting boy, the son of the artist.

All this is good practice for the upcoming Madrid/Lisbon trip.  Start at the top, work your way down, take all the time you possibly can. It won’t be enough.

 

Chi-town at Christmas

The day after Christmas we depart for Glen Ellyn, a charming suburb just outside of Chicago. I go to visit my bio-dad, a man of great aplomb and consequence. This is my fifth consecutive year for this trip, so it didn’t occur to me to write it up in Chasing Paint until the other day, but my special treat is a day in the Chicago Institute of Art. Robert drops me off at the entrance and we meet for lunch at the  museum’s restaurant, Terzo Piano. Last year, I scored with Lobster Nachos (lobster in hollandaise over fries). Divine!

Not much prep required since I always go just around Christmas. The suitcase contents stay the same, and I can confidently predict the Lions outside the Chicago Institute of Art will be wearing wreaths and standing on Christmas present wrapped plinths. Today I’ll look up the special exhibitions at the CIA, and consider where I’d like to focus. It will be hard to top last year’s show ‘Art & Appetite’ – a still life artist’s dream exhibit.  One twist is my curiosity about small scale sculpture. More on than anon.

Back to baking, decorating, wrapping and otherwise making spirits bright.