It was an 8 hour train trip to reach Madrid and our allocated seats were facing backwards! I couldn’t believe our luck, I can get a bit motion sickness at the best of times let alone going backwards. Anyway it ended up fine I just couldn’t read, so tried to sleep most of the way.
We arrived at our hotel in Madrid at about 8pm and went out for a wee explore as we knew we only had one full day there. We walked for about 2.5 hours all the way up to an amazing park. Madrid was far nicer than I had imagined it would be, I guess my last impression of a European city was Athens which was rather grimey.
The next morning we went on the neweurope free walking tour and again we weren’t
disappointed. We had a British girl as our guide and it was a fantastic way to see the city and learn a bit. We stopped for lunch at a tapas bar which had 100 different types of tiny bread rolls, and you ticked what you wanted on an order sheet, and they make it all there and bring it out on a wooden plate with chips in the middle – actually everywhere you go in Spain they give you chips, years ago a law was passed that you can’t serve alcohol without food accompanying it. In windows of shops you’ll see chips piled high – not in packets!…kind of like how we’d see popcorn at home I guess. Anyway the lil
sandwiches were lovely and I tried this other sangria type thing that was like pink lemonade…delicious. On the tour we got chatting to a few Australians and we all decided to meet up go to a bull fight that night. Now what can I say… except of course that it was totally awful and I stopped watching after the second bull got killed (6 in total!). I guess I can’t say I regret going as it is a big part of their culture and I’m “glad” I’ve seen it but boy oh boy it was really sad, and there’s no way I’d ever go again!
Next morning we had to get up at 5.45am (which was really hard!) to catch the metro and then our train to Valencia, and would you believe it another lot of seats facing backwards!
We arrived at our hotel in Madrid at about 8pm and went out for a wee explore as we knew we only had one full day there. We walked for about 2.5 hours all the way up to an amazing park. Madrid was far nicer than I had imagined it would be, I guess my last impression of a European city was Athens which was rather grimey.
The next morning we went on the neweurope free walking tour and again we weren’t
disappointed. We had a British girl as our guide and it was a fantastic way to see the city and learn a bit. We stopped for lunch at a tapas bar which had 100 different types of tiny bread rolls, and you ticked what you wanted on an order sheet, and they make it all there and bring it out on a wooden plate with chips in the middle – actually everywhere you go in Spain they give you chips, years ago a law was passed that you can’t serve alcohol without food accompanying it. In windows of shops you’ll see chips piled high – not in packets!…kind of like how we’d see popcorn at home I guess. Anyway the lil
sandwiches were lovely and I tried this other sangria type thing that was like pink lemonade…delicious. On the tour we got chatting to a few Australians and we all decided to meet up go to a bull fight that night. Now what can I say… except of course that it was totally awful and I stopped watching after the second bull got killed (6 in total!). I guess I can’t say I regret going as it is a big part of their culture and I’m “glad” I’ve seen it but boy oh boy it was really sad, and there’s no way I’d ever go again!Next morning we had to get up at 5.45am (which was really hard!) to catch the metro and then our train to Valencia, and would you believe it another lot of seats facing backwards!
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You're an inspiration to bloggers that are behind in posting! Looking forward to more photos...
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