Trip to Madrid and Bilbao

It's about time I put up something new on this blog, so here is a brief account of a wonderful trip I made to Madrid and Bilbao to see two exhibitions, Turner And The Masters at El Prado and Henri Rousseau at the Guggenheim.
Jessie and I met outside the Prado and saw the exhibition together. It was very interesting and we enjoyed it, though we did wonder if Turner had really made his point that he was as good or better than the Masters who inspired him.
When we came out we sat and ate cocarois, which made the sparrows very happy.

We spent the rest of the day together and Mario joined us for supper.

The next day I flew up to Bilbao early to see the Rousseau, but had time to go up to Plentzia first to have breakfast beside the river.

The tide was out and I considered going back in the afternoon to do 'before and after' pictures but didn't in the end as I had a lot to see in one day. After wandering about in lovely Plentzia I went back down to the Guggenheim to see the exhibition.

The museum itself (not my picture, obviously! The dog is.) is an extraordinary building which fits into its surroundings perfectly while at the same time creating a real visual impact, particularly at first sight. The exhibition itself was fascinating; really well presented, with interesting explanations which gave me a lot of insight into how and why Rousseau produced his pictures. I came away a confirmed fan, and with a poster of The Football Players!

Next I went for a wander around the historic town centre, which is lovely but was surprisingly quiet. I wonder if it comes alive at sundown.

I decided I had time to go up to Santurtzi, on the other (west) side of the estuary. It's an old fishing port and I enjoyed wandering around looking at the fishing boats,

and the boys mucking around in dinghies (they'd dropped their ball into the water and were trying to rescue it.) It reminded me very much of Cornwall, as did Plentzia.

Something else that needed rescuing was this poor gull, caught by one leg in the fishing nets on the deck of this boat. Horrible to spend the day hanging upside down by one leg. I only hope they set him free when they came onboard that evening.