I haven't been to Spain since I was a teenager, when I spent a month around (but mostly not actually in) Alicante. Back then, they still had Pesetas, booze was dead cheap and everywhere looked like a building site. Now, in 2006 they have Euros, booze is a similar price to here but everywhere still looks like a building site. Come on Spain, finish building your stuff already!
Madrid airport is pretty huge. We flew into Terminal 4, and then had to go on the longest underground monorail journey in the world in order to get to the terminal exit. The monorail was pretty cool though - it looked just like the one at the start of the original Half Life, just without the occasional huge industrial cavern. Overall it took us the best part of three hours from getting off the plane to arriving at the hotel in the centre of Madrid (it involved a little bus, the monorail, some walking, a bigger bus and four Metro lines). Note to anyone arriving at T4: Just get a taxi into town instead. You won't regret it.
Here's a view of Madrid from afar. You have to get a cable car to get to where this was taken from. The Palacio Real (Royal Palace) is dead centre.
Random thoughts and things:
1. Madrid is right in the middle of Spain. This means it has no beaches, unlike some of the edges of the country.
2. Madrid does however seem to have a lot of rain. On the Saturday we got caught in possibly the most torrential rain storm I've ever been in, ever. With added large hail. It was so wet it was funny. But we did get very wet. For some time afterwards, there were huge drifts of used hailstones all over the city. Looked like sago.
3. Most food is ham or cheese. Some places serve ham and cheese together.
4. Our hotel was near a big train station, Atocha. For some reason unbeknownst to me, some madman at some point in the past decided to build a tropical garden smack in the middle of it:
I don't know why he (it must have been a he) did this.
5. I had a challenge set for me to drink 30 beers over the weekend. I was rubbish at this and only got through 15. Which included 2 whilst waiting for the train home in Manchester. I think I'd have been ok if wine counted.
6. There's a big famous art gallery, The Prado. It's mostly quite old paintings in there rather than more modern ones. What this seemed to equate to was about five hundred paintings of Jesus (many of which featured the poor thing being crucified) and Bosch's Garden of Unearthly Delights, which was a bit smaller than I was expecting. I preferred the Reina Sofia which seems to be mostly 20th century art. I like the Joan Miro stuff. Apparently he's pronounced "Huan" rather than "Joan". Little tip for you there to make you look cleverer than you are.
All in all, it was a good weekend - many thanks to everyone who made it out there with me :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment