Madrid

2nd May, Madrid
The flight over was pleasant enough and Iberian Airways are, like all the little European airlines, very good at looking after you. They gave us a lovely cold lunch with wine. I am writing this in our Madrid "hotel" waiting for Ray to get ready so that we can have breakfast. Getting ready takes a long time as there is no hot water and so we are boiling jugfuls at a time using our immersion heater. Otherwise this is a perfectly acceptable little pension, except that we are on the fourth floor and there is no lift! We were accosted by the proprietress when we got off the airport bus and as she quoted half what we had been paying in the U.K. we thought we'd take a chance. We caught a tram which brought us here, an excellent position just off the Gran Via, Madrid's bustling thoroughfare of fashion houses and other shops. Yesterday we went on an afternoon walk exploring the centre of Madrid, where at a street café Ray had a hot chocolate and I had a coffee. Things are incredibly cheap here: our two drinks cost us less than a cup of coffee in London. Later we had supper in a restaurant the Roselts had recommended. We had a huge seafood salad starter which was a meal in itself, and then paella, which we almost could not get through! Then for pudding we ordered the two Spanish dishes which had not been translated on the English half of the menu and they turned out to be a nutty icecream and mousse, and a very thick junket which somehow did not break down into curds and whey when cut. And we also had a jug of sangria, so walked out very replete and merry, having spent the equivalent of about £3.50 each! We are going to be hard pushed to spend all our pesetas. I (foolishly, now it seems) cashed a £40 cheque, thinking we would cash another today if necessary. And it certainly won't be necessary!

3rd May
I think Elaine and Jimmy are getting ready to fly to London today - I do hope they manage to get on the plane. We've had an utterly exhausting day seeing Madrid. We first established how to use the metro, and took it to the terminal for the airport bus tomorrow at Plaza de Colón, just to see how it all worked.

Plaza de Colón.

Plaza de Colón, Madrid: twelve metres tall monument to Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus), who stands at the top (out of photo).

From there we walked to the great Prado Museum particularly to see their big collection of Goyas and painting by Breugel (the elder) and Breughel (the younger). We found the later Goyas very weird. Then we went along to the Picasso section in the Prado and found he was not really our cup of tea. Then we walked through the Retiro Gardens which are formal gardens on a vast scale, typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were not very well kept, but there were lovely chestnut trees in bloom and a rose garden just starting to bloom with the air already heavy with their scent. At that point we split up as I wanted to go back to Plaza de Colón to photograph the fountains which were off when we were there earlier.

El Ritiro Gardens.

Estanque Grande del Retiro.

Horse chestnut blossom in El Ritiro Gardens.

We met back at the pension and then set off to tour the various plazas. We found to our surprise that the city had closed down for its afternoon siesta. The shop hours are 9.00 - 1.00 and 4.00 - 8.00.!!

Praça de Cibeles, Madrid.

Praça de Comercio.

Praça de Oriente with its Monument to Felipe IV.

We are about to go out for supper - paella again if we're lucky, as we have got to the end of our pesetas.

We weren't lucky! Paella was out of our reach so we went back to the Valencia again and had tortillas instead. Then, as we still had a few pesetas left, we went into a patisserie where I put our money on the counter and pointed at what we wanted and we came away with a large sheet of walnut biscuit cum tart cum cake, which was every bit as delicious as it looked!

View from our pension, Madrid.

On to Lisbon

 

Return to 1984 Holiday Index