December 11 – Tomorrow to Bilbao

Tomorrow we take our last field trip and go to Bilbao for a few days, we want to see the Guggenheim museum and get a taste of the Basque region.  We decided to see a temporary exhibit called associated with the Duchess of Alba.  She is an 87 year old Spanish noble who married a guy 25 years younger and is still pretty spry; we don’t know much about him.   We got down there and decided to change our plans and go another time to the Prado; once there we saw the Roman and medieval sections of the museum and finished out with a temporary exhibit on Van Dyke in his youth.   It is completely amazing at what he produced before he was 22 years old; I mean his self-portrait at age 15 would be considered a mature work for many artists and he only got better.   He worked with Rubens until he was 22 and then went to live in Rome for several years to round out his education.   After the Prado we took a little late afternoon walking tour of downtown Madrid to look at the holiday lights, they were very nice but not earthshaking.