The Prado if I’m not mistaken ranks alongside the best museums in the world, yet they still haven’t quite mastered the art of customer satisfaction. While other museums in recent years, the Rijksmuseum comes to mind, have lifted bans on taking photos of the art on display, the Prado continues to disallow it for their own reasons. My best guess is to be able to milk as much income from their souvenir store – that or they’re simply being selfish. Our first encounter with the Prado was at the Cloisters where we took photos with abandon and with no one telling us not to. Our next stop, a special exhibit around Rogier van set Weyden, after shooting a couple of frames, was when we were told it wasn’t allowed. Since such a rule is usually the case with special exhibits, I didn’t think too much about it. Unfortunately, when we went to see the museum’s regular collection, they pretty much verified the archaic restriction, and so that was that. It would have been nice to capture a photo of Las Meninas for example, that’s been engrained in my memory since high school after seeing it in a book of masterpieces. I remember the book mentioning that it hung at the Prado Museum in Madrid, the concept of which I could not fathom as it was the farthest thing from my mind back then, that I would be able to see it in person. Finally seeing it in front of me was meaningful in so many ways, but also a bit disappointing that I couldn’t take away a piece of the experience along with me. My memory that seems to grow dull with age will have to do.