Though resplendent with purchases and a happy tired from looking at a bunch of yarn, after we had dropped off said yarn at the place we were staying the day was still young. Or at least young by Spanish standards. I have mentioned it before but I grew up with access to the Smithsonian museums and I always figured they were by far the best museums in the world. But they close at five. Like quitters. A wonderful emergent property of Spanish culture is that the museums stay open until 8 which is a much more reasonable time for a museum to close. We took full advantage of this by going to two additional museums in the afternoon.

The first, as you’ve guessed from the header image, was the Museo Sorolla. This museum is the former house and workshop of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, and the museum is of course dedicated to him. Joaquín there was a painter and his favorite subject was “sun-soaked,” which is just a fantastic thing to be obsessed with (unless you are The Stranger I suppose). There is a handy Google Arts & Culture thing of the collections if you want to see better photos. The first main room of the museum is the room that was historically Sorolla’s showroom, and so they have it jam-packed with a bunch of his paintings just like they would have been back in the day. Except now you can’t buy them, though the museum does have a lovely little gift shop.

While we were there they had a temporary exhibit on the various things that Sorolla painted as he travelled through the Iberian peninsula, which was fun because it let me imagine travelling through the Iberian peninsula, which is what we were doing, except Sorolla got to do it for work and so far I haven’t been able to do it for work. I gotta explore a different line of work man. After that you went on into the rest of his house, which was also jam-packed, except now with artworks by other people and other curious. Also TILES! We were at this point just getting a little taste of what the rest of our trip through Spain would be like, but we loved the tilework. You can also catch just the smallest glimpse in the photo below, but in his yard was an orange tree and this was February and like, oranges in February! Bonkers. Little did I know what was to come. Lemme tell ya, wandering through a gorgeous house with fantastic gardens so we could look at sun-soaked art is a great way to spend the first half of the second part of your afternoon.

But since it was the first half of the second part of the afternoon, the day was clearly not over! We had hours left until the museums closed! So I convinced my super amazing wife to let us wander on over and check out the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, aka The MAN:

The MAN was really great! I wish we had been able to spend more time here but them’s the breaks when you are trying to do the third major activity for the day. Ancient Spanish history has never really come up in my U.S.-based education or my personal reading, so pretty much everything in the museum was new and exciting and a novelty to absorb. Like for example I had no idea there were Celtic cultures in ancient Spain, that’s totally new and I haven’t been able to really delve into the significance of that. I was very glad to learn about the influence of the Phoenicians too because that really put a lot into perspective. And MAN! The artifacts at the MAN! These were so good! So well preserved! Where was this stuff hanging out before someone dug it up and put it in a museum? I mean look at the stuff below! (I wish I could link to the museum’s own photos of these objects like I usually try to do but they have one of the worst online collections catalogues I’ve seen, though I suppose it’s nice they at least try)

I mean look at those baskets! Two thousand years old and the plant fibers have survived! You could almost still use them to carry around ore! And that water pump! Like toss some new gaskets in there and I think you could once again use it to spray water on superheated ores to cause them to crack, so you can then load them into the plant fiber baskets! And the mosaic! Not as unusual in my experience as the baskets and the water pump but still that is a funky little octopus! And when I talk about “where were they keeping these things” I was really talking about these again two-thousand-year-old lead law documents! Where were those sitting? And finally I mean ASTROLABES AHHHHH!

For serious they had so much cool stuff and we barely glimpsed the collection. I am def going to have to go back someday with a full day to explore. I don’t even think you have to feel bad about looking at any of these things because they are Spanish things from Spain in Spain! And in another twist of glimpses of things to come, they also had stuff from the Alhambra, which was fantastic to whet our appetites. Speaking of appetites, after we dragged ourselves out of the MAN we were hungry and it was time for dinner. On the recommendation of a friend we went to Casa Julio where for the first time in Spain croquettes betrayed us by being too large, meaning we ordered much too much. And so, full on art, archeology, and food, we stumbled back to the pad to prep for our final full day in Madrid.