Velázquez at the Prado

This is the statue of Diego Velázquez which stands in front of the Prado Museum in Madrid. Velázquez is Spain's greatest painter and his work is wonderfully represented in the museum--not least by his magisterial painting Las Meninas. I took this shot about a half-hour after sunset--the colors are not exaggerated.

We fly back to JFK tomorrow, after three wonderful weeks in Spain. We were saying againt to each other tonight: People here are just so friendly and nice, receptive to our modest Spanish, interested to hear that we're from the United States. The economic crisis is clearly very much here, but things function (e.g. trains and buses on time), and people seem very even-tempered.