today as we were walking to the museo de casa de lope de vega there was a torrential downpour as i've never quite experienced before. there was also a security woman who took her job more seriously than any other i've ever encountered.
my cousins and i have always been more than a little obsessed with rain. perhaps it is due to the fact that it rain is a scarce and rare commodity in the utah desert, or because the smell of wet pavement is a cure for the nearly any aliment; whatever the reason, rain just gives a feeling of majesty and potency to everything.
today was no exception. walking through the streets of Madrid with the palacio de comunicacion on my left and parque de retiro to my right, and the rain falling in sheets, I couldn't have been happier. my four-dollar umbrella from Target decided to go on the fritz with the wires bending to the will of the wind, so i finally decided to put it away, using my scarf as the only protection against the elements. by the time we arrived at the museum, i was soaked through. the security woman was quite intense, acting as if we were entering a high-security area rather being the only visitors to a free to the public museum. She told us all multiple times that we were to put our "paraguas" in THAT corner, no we could not take pictures, no there was no place to put our coats, yes all our backpacks were to be taken off.
the museum was a replication of the house of the famous Spanish playwright, Lope de Vega, as it was in the middle of Spain's Golden Age. it was everything you would imagine it to be; dark wood, canopy beds, tapestries etc... My favorite room was the study, where the old man himself would sit and write his masterpieces. The walls were lined with ancient books and maps.
after our tour we were walking down the stairs and the security woman ran up the stairs to follow us back down. once we reached the bottom, she told me "no entendeis espanol muy bien, porque os dije a esperar..." what? rude. we left the museum in a hurry with her angry glare boring holes in our backs as we disappeared through the door.
