Week 5 – Monday 28th July – Madrid

Set the alarm today (woohoo…almost like being at work), to get up bright and early to take the RENFE fast train into Madrid. We’d read that catching the train was problematic, but after a brief taxi ride to the train station we purchased a ticket for the train – no problems. Seriously, it’s a train service, they sell tickets to allocated seats, how hard can that be……read on gentle reader – the situation in Madrid tomorrow will be a totally different matter, but at this stage, we are living in blissful ignorance of what was to confront us.

The train service is great – very modern fast trains, that don’t go clickety-clack, clickety-clack. There is a security check before you get onto the train, so it was good to see that the ETA threat is being taken seriously and it did make us feel safer, particularly as our seats were right beside the luggage rack at the very front of the train. The trip into Madrid takes 28 minutes , with no stops. The thing that amazed us was that for all but about the last two minutes of the trip you are in the baron, arid countryside around Madrid. I had expected that for a city of 3.5 million people that we would spend most of the trip winding through the outer suburbs of Madrid.

The impression that we got as we left the train and headed through the Railway Station was that everything about Madrid was big, modern and efficient. The railway station itself is an impressive building, built as two long parallel brick buildings, about the length of a rugby field, built about the width of a rugby field apart, with a huge roof arching between the two of them. The centre section under the roof contains an indoor tropical garden that has humidifiers atomizing water above it constantly.

Heading into the city, we walked up Paseo de Prado, toward the Prado Museum. The Paseo is a 4 lanes each way artery, with trees lining one side, and a large tree lined Rambla style centre section. At 10:00am, the temperature was already at 30 degrees, but with the big oak trees all the way up the road, the walk was very cool and pleasant.

Finding an information centre outside the Prado (where perfect English was spoken), the first bit of news was that the Prado was closed on Mondays, so having obtained a map we headed further up Paseo de Prado to the Grand Via to head in the direction of the hotel we had booked for the night.

As I said, Madrid is magnificent – the buildings, with their ornate decoration, the monuments, fountains, tree lined streets were great to walk amongst and this was before we even got to the palace. It’s a very fast paced city, particularly the traffic and has many more multi laned streets and more fast moving traffic than we had seen even in Barcelona. The much lower population of scooters and what two wheeled transport there is, is much larger motor bikes seems to be testament to this fact.

Finding our hotel, right in the centre of the main pedestrian precinct, we were fortunate to be able to check in early and were really impressed with the service that we got from the hotel staff. It’s a very nice hotel in a perfect location and we’d only checked in early so I could drop off our bag and not have to carry it all day.

We spent the next couple of hours on a walking tour, taking in the main sites of Madrid. The Placa de Sol, with its statue of Madrid’s symbol, the bear eating out of the strawberry tree (??? – who came up with that), Plaza Mayor – big central town square, with three storey buildings on all sides – similar to Salamanca, but not quite so impressive and then on to the Palace and the areas surrounding it.

The day was hot, sunny and clear, but as I’ve mentioned above, it’s a very dry heat, so quite manageable and walking in the middle of the day was no problem for us. Leaving the Palace, we went into Plaza D’Espagne, which is a much more intimate area that the other squares we had been in – trees all around it and a big monument in the centre. We stopped there for a while and had a seat under the shade of the trees and observed the mounted police loading their horses into their very plush truck float.

After a further walk to another square, which didn’t rock our world, we headed back down towards the royal palace for lunch. This was back to our preferred standard – white table cloths, large wine glasses, cane chairs – and settled in for a relaxed and lengthy lunch people watching. The food was very nice – grilled monk fish, a mushroom risotto and an seafood salad, so we were pleased to be back into good food again. The mist dispensers we’d seen in the railway station were also in action here, and this time it was us who were being “misted” upon. I’m not sure how much good it does in the open air, as all the mist just seemed to blow away.

After lunch, we walked back to the hotel via the pedestrian precinct that makes up a good portion of central Madrid. On the way, we found a leather shop that had an orange leather jacket which Anne fell in love with, so it was good to buy that for her, as we’ve bought very little on this holiday. The jacket was on sale at 40% discount, but while Anne was trying it on, the woman informed us that “just today” it was on 60% discount. While I was paying for it, she fastidiously prepared a tax return voucher to make sure that we got a further 10% discount on the price we had paid.

After an evening siesta, we retuned to the Palace area, where we found a restaurant serving Montadito’s – small bread rolls with a filling. After a large lunch, these were just what we felt like, so we devoured a couple of courses of them and some beer and wine.