Back to Madrid and our lovely hostal

The flight from HongKong to Madrid was smooth and easy…I really liked Cathay…again in little nooks, slightly different format as this was an airbus and the first one was a 777, and I rather preferred this…or maybe I’ve now learned the little knobs and tricks…anyway, it was good, and timeless - I watched a movie, Song Sung Blue as it was the only one in the huge selection that I’d even heard of, and it was good…watched a few episodes of TV series that I could cope with, and read, and lay back and drifted off to sleep for quite a while…when we took off I didn’t feel hungry at all and said I’d let them know when I wanted something (they had a list of all day/night offerings) and when I surfaced and realised I’d missed 2 meal servings I couldn’t wait till breakfast which was still about 6 hours away so ordered a dish with cauliflower and lemon aioli, cubes of sweet potato and pumpkin seeds on a bed of quinoa…just perfect…probably just normal for all those used to business class travel, but I am still greatly in awe of this all, hence the long descriptions of what is rather mundane!

Anyway, we arrived on time, bag retrieved and then the only glitch in this till now perfect journey - the transfer person never showed…I was rather excited to think I’d be greeted by someone with my name on a placard, but no. It may have been complicated because I was at the puento de encuentro really quickly - landed at 9.30 and there soon after 10! No crowd in passport control, just straight through. But I waited almost an hour, and in the end hopped in a taxi and was delivered here, and only €33…I bet the transfer would be more.

Went to room, relaxed, a bit of downtime during which I got totally stuck on Wordle (and still haven’t succeeded), and then went out into the lovely spring Madrid day. New green leaves and blossoms looking beautiful and temperature in the 20s, quite crowded as I believe it’s school holidays.

I first went down into the metro at opera, right outside the hotel, to check on my metro card as want to use it tomorrow to get to the bus station. I was fiddling and working out how to do a top up and a kind young man looked at the reading of my card and explained that I still had 2 trips on it, and not to top it up yet as long as I was in the city area, so here’s hoping it will work tomorrow.

Then I popped into a little place, Tapa Tapa, which does just that and had a perfect little plate of tuna with guacamole and seaweed, and a sangria. Then a bit of a wander round the familiar streets till I felt as if time to blob, even had shower now as in evening may be too tired to organise clothes! And might have been too tired to write this and even remember the doings of the day.Read more