Madrid, Spain is known for it’s famous bullfighting, flamenco dancers, notorious cured ham, beautiful art museums, beautiful ancient architecture, having and for it’s beautiful plazas. But beyond all of it’s famous, well-known attractions, there are more beautiful mysteries hidden inside the city. Retiro Park is mostly known for it's big monument of King Alfonso XII and it's surrounding pond where people can be found canoeing and mingling with each other.
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| Monument of King Alfonso XII and pond |
I find some of the other surrounding areas, however, more unique. If you wander around more, you’ll find the above mentioned park, which I like to call "Dr. Seuss Land" because it has such unique landscaping that it reminds me of a place that would come out of one of his stories. In Spain, it’s much easier to find a big hunk of meat to eat than it is to find vegetables, which I think may be one reason why I liked this park- because I love my veggies and the trees look like broccoli to me. From the broccoli looking trees to the statue in the middle of the plaza, to the castle and smoke off in the background, this shows you deep inside Madrid. It makes Madrid look mysterious. Like who lives in the distant castle, and where is that smoke coming from in the background?
The image of "Dr. Seuss Land" may strike you as being a bit obnoxious, and "in your face," however I did this because I wanted to make sure that the reader's attention was mostly directed towards this. The below text and other image I provided from a more common place in the park (Monument of King Alfonso XII) was to provide a bit of background information, before jumping into the mysterious "Dr. Seuss Land." I made the image so big because want it to stick out because I think this is such a unique place. By looking at it, and really analyzing it in full detail, one can get very creative with it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the pictures you used for both the heading of the blog and the photo of the monument in the Dr. Seuss land. I enjoyed these pictures especially because they explicitly show the area you’re talking about and because they don’t appear to be professionally taken it seems as though you took them yourself, which maybe you did. However, for aesthetic purposes and ease of navigating the blog I think it would be best to adjust the size of the image in the header. As it stands now, it is too large to fit the screen and requires scrolling to be viewed in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteFor the first blog post itself, I found the reading to be light and relatable making it enjoyable to read. I like how you juxtapose the traditional perception of Spain with your own experiences and opinions and compare it to a fantasy land of strange wonder. Dr. Seuss has a very pronounced and well known artistic style and I find it interesting that you chose to compare his Oh the Place You’ll Go book with Retiro park. Seeing as the entire blog centers on how this park reminds you of Dr. Seuss, I would like to see you go into more detail about how exactly the architecture reminds you of his style. The only bit of description we receive is about the broccoli trees and a general statement about the smoke in the background. Why do the broccoli trees stand out? Don’t most trees look like broccoli? Were there any interesting structure besides the monument that helped you make the comparison in the first place? Do the trees make the park feel magical or fantasy like similar to the book? There are a couple of different routes you could go with the blog but I would love to see more detail! Good luck with the rest of the project!