5 nights in Madrid

May 20, 2024 to May 24, 2024

We all go our own now

On Saturday we all went our own way a little sad that this family time had finished. Matthew went back to Murcia, Jane and Mark to walk part of the Camino and Ken and I caught the bus to Madrid

What is fantastic bus trip it is taking you half way across the country. Out of Bilbao you are into serious and beautiful mountains. The forest was very varied at times all conifers then big areas of deciduous trees and of course some of the eucalyptus trees that Franco was so keen on. The motorway was perfect and almost empty and the country almost devoid of any habitation. I couldn’t help but wonder how you would cycle it but it must be possible as Scott and Rachel must have crossed similar mountains on there way to Santander

Leaving the mountains behind we come to wonderful looking agricultural country with lots of wheat, it would be a long time until it is ready for harvest. Then huge areas of grapes. What suprised us was that they were really very early in their growth cycle but then we realised that the equivalent time at home would be mid November when their was never much growth on our vines

As we neared Madrid the country didn’t look so bountiful and we began to run into the inevitable industrial areas of a big city. Of the bus and into a taxi we were whisked to our hotel

Matthew, who live in Madrid for a year, suggested that probably the best part of the city to stay was in the Atocha area which is so near to many of the things we wanted to see. He was right the hotel is great and we even have a local bar just next door where we are now greeted like friends when we stop for a coffee or a beer

Madrid we thought was a beautiful city, at least in the part we were in and we had both an interesting and very relaxing time. We startd off thinking we would visit the Prada Museum but when we arrived the lines waiting to enter it were to us unacceptably long so we diverted to the Thyssen. No lines and a collection of really old paintings that we really enjoyed seeing

A painting of Henry the Eighth by Holbein in the Thysson

We loved this ancient painting of a boat

The next day it was to La Riena Sophia as we could hardly come to Madrid without seeing Picasso’s famous Guernica painting. It is huge painting depicting so powerfully the horrors of war. La Reina is however much more than that painting with works by Salvador Dali and many others. Too us some of the most interesting exhibits were the posters that had been printed during Franco times many of them very confronting

Extremely powerful posters from during the Civil War

The Prada but the lines were too long for us

On Wednesday we met up with Jacob and Veronica - they were flying back to Brisbane the next day. It was nice to meet up with them in our ‘local’ bar and hear of their adventures in Barcelona

Leaving art behind we took Stephen’s advice and visited the Naval museum This is based largely on beautiful large models that have been made of the exquisite ships of the Spanish Navy when it was involved in the exploration of the world. I had thought that I would learn lots about the Spanish Armada but surprisingly there was almost nothing on this subject

A model of the first ship to navigate the world The Victoria the one survivors of Magellans expedition. The world was definitely a sphere

then on Saturday it was time to take taxi to the enormous Madrid airport for our flight to Porto where we joined our cruise of the Duoro

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