tile roofs ancient patterns Adam and Eve

 Landing in Madrid, this could be December 30.  The man sitting next to me, on the flight to Paris, said 'no need to see the Prado, you have been to the Met, it is just more of the same'.  There was not much time, but I wandered through the Prado, just to see a painting or maybe two, finding Ruben's Adam and Eve and  a very long Tinteretto.  This was good.  In Toledo, the El Greco museum was closed, but we found a church with a large El Greco altarpiece, so the real intent, the room and the installation was visible, so ornate. The nuns, who mostly seemed quite aged ran the entrance to the shrine to El Greco and sold sweet backed goods.  I saw  a small painting of a well dressed woman being accompanied by two angels, she seemed reluctant to take that next step, their arms were around her arms, but she seemed like she wanted to maybe slip away.

 Sometimes a tiny fragment can suggest the whole thing. Like the painting of the two nuns, painted on some kind of door, high above eye level in the chapel...I thought maybe it was a monument to eternal sisterhood and the importance of art.

 

 There was nothing open on New Years eve, except the only Chinese restaurant in town, in the village of Antequera. That is some distance unclimbable mountain, it base covered in olive trees and orange groves.

I want to paint an orange tree like Giotto would paint an orange tree.  It still amazes me that oranges just grow on trees.