"We operate every day of the year"

Oh no, you don’t, but more of that in a moment. Originally we were planning to forget about Madrid and concentrate our efforts on Toledo. Somehow though it seemed all wrong to have come all this way and to have seen nothing more of Madrid than the airport and a couple of railway stations. The Madrid weather forecast was for a possible thunderstorm but otherwise fine throughout the day. We decided to risk it by heading to the capital on the wonderful high-speed train then getting tickets on the hop-on, hop-off bright red double-decker buses which every attractive city in the world seems to have these days.

The helpful lady at the tourist information centre at Atocha Station (Madrid’s equivalent of Melbourne’s Spencer Street) told us exactly where the ticket kiosk was and gave us a brochure which included a map showing all the hop-on, hop-off bus stops. We emerged from the station only to find the main roads barricaded off and hundreds of police everywhere. The footpaths were crowded with happy Madrid citizens enjoying a Sunday afternoon in the city. So, what about the bus tours? Despite the first sentence of the brochure clearly stating that the tours operate every single day of the year, it’s clear that it wasn’t the case for Sunday 15 September 2019. Apparently there had been some big bike race around all of Spain, and it was finishing right there and then in the centre of Madrid.

Undaunted, we decided that we’d simply go to the Prado Museum instead. That was, until we saw the queue to get in. It was several hundred metres long and we weren’t going to be a part of that. Bike races aside, it seems that there are always big crowds in Madrid on a Sunday, made up mainly of family groups. While we were disappointed initially, the day certainly wasn’t a disaster. We wandered round, walking several kilometres admiring the interesting architecture and the interesting shops, The food shops especially grab Brian’s attention. There are shops specialising in ham of various types while others have amazing cakes, bread and sweets. By the end of the afternoon we were convinced that Madrid definitely requires a return visit. We can hardly wait.

As a footnote, we happened to see quite a few of the cyclists heading down one of the major avenues at very high speed. They were largely ignored by the general population who were more interested in the shopping, strolling and museum visiting. Clearly they had better things to do with their time too.Читать далее