Thumbs down for Madrid

To get to Madrid, we came via Irun in the north of Spain and had a three hour stopover to get the next train to Madrid. All that time we had nothing to do but sit on little wooden tracks turned into benches and stare at a little Spanish shopkeeper.

When we finally got onto the train, we were in first class because there were no 2nd class left, and it was even fancier than the tgv to Bordeaux, no slumming it for us :) Me a poor peasant that I am have never been in first class, where we got everyting free from wine and nuts, to earfones, a film and dinner. Spain though was even worse for vegetarians than France. Nearly every meal there has some animal body part in it. I just stuck to the gazpacho, a cold tomato soup and some fresh crusty bread.



When we got to the hotel finally about six hours later, Patrick who was in charge of booking the hotel, informs me "oh yeah by the way the hotel is a four star, it was the cheapest I could find" as I looked at him incredulously. I think someone was living in a dream!


The people in Spain, were not all that friendly, granted that we didn't speak Spanish, but you would think staff in a four star hotel would be able to speak English, but they had hardly a word.

On the second night there we found a family of ants trailing along under the bed and all over our clothes, we literally had ants in our pants!

Of Madrid itself, the city has some beautiful buildings and architecture but we were situated a good bit outside the city centre so we spent a lot of time on the metro, from one place to another.

The main sights that we saw were the Palacio Royale and the Prado museum, but unfortunately you couldn't take any pictures inside the Prado, which has famous paintings to rival Italy and the palace was closing for the day at three just as we got there.









some of the paintings the Prado houses: http://www.vincesear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/bosch.gif Hieronymus Bosch - Garden of earthly delights
Las Meninas - Valezquez http://educacionplasticayvisual.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/velazquez.meninas.jpg

The three graces - Rubens
http://www.museodelprado.es/en/bienvenido/15-masterpieces/ficha-obra/obra/the-three-graces/

On the whole although we were just staying in Madrid to wait for a flight to Morocco, I wouldn't go back.