The Greatest Museums in the World: The Met, The Louvre, The Prado, and The Hermitage

When I was in the Army, I was taking night classes to get my college degree.  I was required to take two Humanities electives.  So I decided to take Art Appreciation.  It seemed like an easy class, an easy A.  What I didn't count on was learning to appreciate Art.  It's funny how education works sometimes.  Since then, in our travels, we have visited art museums whenever the opportunity arises.  Over the years, we have been lucky enough to visit what some consider the 4 greatest museums in the world.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Louvre in Paris, France; The Prado in Madrid, Spain; and The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 2001, I had just retired from the United States Army, so we decided to take a trip to New York City to celebrate.  We were still working, so it was a long Presidents' Day weekend.  Although this was a few years ago, I can remember that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, referred to as the Met, had a Frank Lyod Wright furniture exhibit.  Of course, I remember the 2 most famous paintings at the Met: Washington Crossing the Delaware, a huge painting at 12 X 21 feet, is impressive.  Although less known, Portrait of Madam X left an impression.  

The Louvre  

One cannot think about Paris without thinking about the Louvre.  Its Iconic glass pyramid in the museum's courtyard is the worldwide symbol for Art.  In 2013, I was working in Afghanistan, and our family decided to meet in Paris.  Of course, when in Paris, this should be on anyone's list of destinations.  Most people go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, which we did.  But the Louvre is so much more.   The one thing I remember the most is the bust of George Washington. 

"Jean-Antoine Houdon's marble bust of George Washington, created between 1789 and 1808, is housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris.  Based on a 1785 life mask and studies from Mount Vernon, it is part of several highly accurate neoclassical portraits Houdon produced following a commission from Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin." - Wikipedia.

The Prado 

In 2022, before our Mediterranean Cruise, we spent a week in Madrid.  The Prado is one of the highlights of our stay in Madrid, Spain.  It houses some of the greatest European Art in existence.  The building was designed in 1785 and originally held only Spanish Art.  It continues to hold the Spanish Royal Collection.  Its 1st catalog was published in 1811.  Spain's most famous artist, Goya, has many works displayed here. 

The museum is divided into four floors.  We began at the top and worked our way into the basement.  The Art from the 11th century to the present is overwhelming and exhausting to take in on only one day.  It was a long day, but it was completely worth it.  We ate in the Museum Cafe for lunch and spent about six hours going through the museum. 

Much like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, Goya's "The Executions" is a major attraction at the Prado.  It is a large painting, almost 9 Feet high and 12 Feet wide.  Its theme is emotional and historic, depicting the killing of Spanish rebels in Madrid by conquering Napoleonic French forces on 3 May 1808.  A trip to the Prado is something you will never forget. 

The Hermitage, in St. Petersburg, Russia.  

In 2018, we took a Scandinavian cruise, and at that time, we could visit St. Petersburg, Russia.  We had 2 full tour days there.  One afternoon was dedicated to the Hermitage, formerly known as the Winter Palace. Originally, it was Catherine the Great's winter home.  The palace was stormed during the 1917 revolution.  

The shot was heard worldwide from the Cruiser Aurora, which sparked the 1917 communist revolution.  Now a museum of both the palace and over 3 million pieces of Art.  It is the world's largest art museum, with the 4th-largest art collection.  It was an assault on the senses, overwhelming.  They have Rembrandt's last painting here in the Rembrandt wing.  A couple of El Greco's and 2 Da Vinci's. 
 

Walking through these museums was filled with magical moments.  It was the fulfillment of a dream to see many of the things I studied in that Art Appreciation class years ago.  This is what travel is all about.  It's about education; travel changes you.  

My Year in Afghanistan: Ahmed the Laundry Clerk.

People and their different cultures amaze me. At Bagram in Afghanistan, we have contractors from all over the world. I call it our micro-society of the world at Bagram Airfield, we have Americans, English, Africans, Indians, Uzbek's, Russians, and of course Afghans. The Afghans are more amazed by everything they see. We have truck drivers who wait in a shelter next to where I work who are amazed by a package of cheese and crackers. Sometimes we start an impromptu soccer game, which they immediately recognize.

In the DFAC, sometimes I get there right before closing when the DFAC workers start to eat; what I'm amazed with is that the Indians and Afghans can't get enough sour cream, they eat it with everything, on bread, in rice, by itself like pudding. This is a cultural thing learned young by eating cream separated from the milk of the cow or goat.

At our laundry facility, I got to know some of the people working there just by picking up and dropping off my laundry a couple of times a week. One day, one of the laundry clerks, Ahmed, was complaining about a toothache. I told him I could get him some aspirin for the pain and that he should see a dentist. Although he knew a little English, there was still a big language barrier between the two of us. I came back a couple of hours later to give him the aspirin, which amazingly he had never seen before. I told him again that he needed to see a dentist. He just smiled and nodded yes.

A couple of weeks passed, and I didn't see Ahmed at the laundry facility. I finally asked some of the other clerks, and they told me that Akmed had gotten sick and died. They never did tell me what he died of. That he just got sick and died, again, the language barrier was a problem. I do know I have heard stories from medical personnel there that Afghans can die of the simplest things, and this was probably the case.

The King Ranch: 825,000 Acres of Texas

I once heard someone say that Corpus Christi is a big town surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. If you check a map, you’ll see that most of the space between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, which are about 170 miles apart, is taken up by the King Ranch. This ranch is the largest in the Western Hemisphere, covering 825,000 acres, making it bigger than the country of Luxembourg.

We drove to Kingsville and took a tour today. At first, the ranch looks like any other cattle ranch, but it’s actually a big company with business interests around the world and its main office in Houston. The Texas ranch is divided into four areas: Santa Gertrudis, Laureles, Encino, and Norias. We visited the Santa Gertrudis Division, which is the ranch’s original name and where it all started. The ranch also developed the Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle, officially recognized in 1940 and now found worldwide. There’s a herd of longhorn cattle on the ranch, kept for historical reasons. Besides cattle, the ranch has a top-notch quarter horse program that produced the Triple Crown winner Assault.

During the tour, we drove by the main house and the workers' village. Each division has a self sustaining work force community. An interesting fact is that after the War with Mexico, Robert E. Lee, a friend of Mr. King, helped select the best spot for the main house. The best tactical location for the house was chosen, protected by a creek gully. The house, which you cannot tour, is still used for family events and considered the ranch's ancestral home.

An interesting fact most of the first ranch workers came from Mexico. "In one notable case, King traveled to the village of Cruillas, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in the early months of 1854 (the village having been decimated by a severe drought) and purchased the village's entire cattle population. But shortly after leaving the village, King realized that by solving the village's short-term problem, by providing needed income to survive the drought, he had created a longer-term one by removing its source of future income. King thus returned to Cruillas and offered the villagers the opportunity to work for him in exchange for food, shelter, and income. Many of the villagers accepted the King's offer and relocated to Texas. As the ranch grew, these workers came to be called kineños, or King's men." The ranch’s brand is known worldwide, and its property now covers over a million acres, including a turf farm in Florida. There’s even a special King Ranch edition of a Ford truck.

After we toured the King Ranch, we stopped by the town’s museum. The museum celebrates the King family, the ranch’s cowboys, and its famous brand. The Famous wave "W" is a brand developed because it has no intersections in the writing. These intersections can cause infections because they burn deeper into the tissue. The museum's photo collection depicts the 1940s. If you're in South Texas, you must see the King Ranch.