Picasso

Seattle Art Museum had an amazing Picasso exhibit since October. I heard about it maybe in November, then Christmas came and all that jazz  and I was thinking I had missed it. Then I heard on the news that there were only a few days left until Picasso was leaving town, today being the last day to be exact. :)

I checked out the SAM website and I found out all online tickets were sold out except that they had reserved some tickets for walk-ins. The problem was that also on the blog I found out that there could be a four hour line for a show time that was another few hours later. At this point I decided Picasso was not worth staying in line that long especially since I was still sick. 

When all my hope was lost I checked out the blog one more time around 5pm and it said  there was no line left and they still had tickets for the evening and night hours. 

I called mom, took a bus into the city and went to get our tickets really hoping the blog was right and that there were still tickets left. When we got there the only tickets left were for no other time other than... drum roll... 11pm. (They had the exhibit open until midnight the last few days) The guy told us that he thinks that's too short a time to really enjoy Picasso but alas I decided to get the tickets anyway. 

Sadly the buses only were running until 11pm so we had to go back home and get my car. 

We took the bus home and around 8pm we decided to go back to Seattle in hopes of  finding a parking spot.  (I live about 20 minutes away) Well, as you can imagine with the exhibit being sold out there were NO free parking spots on side roads and we decided to just park in a close by parking garage.  We then went into the museum and saw their other exhibits which were pretty cool including a lot of Native American stuff and African masks, photography and glass and porcelain items. 

Picasso was  just amazing.  I downloaded an MP3 audio tour on my cell and that really made the experience even better having someone explain more about each important piece, etc. Indeed we had to rush to see all the major paintings and sculptures. 

What an interesting and genial person. I really, really liked seeing his work up close and personal.

Midnight we pretty much got kicked out of there. 

Now on to the parking garage to go home. 

Well... We got there and to our dismay the parking garage was CLOSED. Right at midnight. Seriously? What the what? How could I have missed that? We were standing outside in the cold  and the wind starts to pick up with a fury. I think I lost my hat twice. Shane was in bed and so were the kids so he couldn't come. Dad had never driven in the city and we were at this point thinking taking a taxi might be the best idea since that would be cheaper than an accident that could very well happen. I mean things were already going badly I didn't want to chance it. Plus there are homeless and drunks out at that hour, we were a little scared and just wanted out of there. 

Boy did I pay for my poor planning or shall we say lack of any planning? Being spontaneous is fun and all but certainly NOT today. 

Here's the run down:

Bus ticket to and back-$2 ( In retrospect we should have stayed the first time we got the tickets and just hung out in Seattle, then see the exhibit, then taxi home)

Gas money to get to city-who knows?

Parking spot-$9 (or what it should have been had we left before they closed-bill this morning-$32)

Cab-$25

Ticket to see Picasso-Priceless Apparently ($23) Sigh...

I did enjoy my adventure downtown especially since I went with mom. It's so fun to have her close by and thanks to Shane who stayed home with the kids so I could go have this fun and expensive adventure. I still can't say I regret seeing Picasso, but it's a little tough to swallow that I paid through the nose compared to anyone else. I am sure of it. Do you think Picasso is laughing right about now? Geez! 

Well, live and learn. 

Hopefully. 

Yours truly, 

Maddy Baddy