Spain
Madrid

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    • Day 54

      Last day in Madrid

      May 14, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 75 °F

      Miles: 7.32 Steps: 17081
      Flights stairs: 15

      Not too sad to be saying goodbye to Madrid - it wasn’t my favorite city. They DO public parks VERY well, I will say. Beautiful green spaces everywhere. But other than that, it wasn’t really for me. Luckily, Jordan woke up to find her stomach bug was all gone. Whatever it was only lasted about 12 hrs.

      We went to Mercado San Miguel for an early lunch of Tapas. Really yummy. Then off to an art museum to specifically see an exhibition of American landscape paintings - the museum wanted to bring American artists work here to show Europeans their talent. It was pretty cool.

      I’m not quite sure what’s up with Europe having Egyptian artifacts, but we visited the Temple of Debod - an actual Egyptian temple it was being destroyed in floods in 1968, and Egypt asked anyone in the world to help save this temple, and Spain came to the rescue. They dismantled, shipped and rebuilt it here. Crazy.

      The plaza mayor is the central gathering place in old town Madrid - we headed there for dinner and a final farewell.
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    • Day 14

      Madrid #02

      April 29 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

      Heute war ein recht gemütlicher Tag.
      Unser erster Spaziergang ging quer durch den Ritero Park, am Ende sind wir vor dem Museo del Prado gelandet. Da wir heute keine Lust auf stundenlange Museumsbesuche hatten, ging’s gemütlich durch kleine Gassen zum Mercado. 😋😋
      Danach haben wir von der Aussichtsplattform des Cortes Ingles eine Blick über die Stadt geworfen.
      Zum Abschluss sind wir noch über die Gran Via geschlendert und in einige Geschäfte gefallen. 😊 Frau hat wieder einige Kleinigkeiten erstanden.
      Da ja einkaufen bekanntlich müde macht, ging’s nach den Einkäufen retour zum Campingplatz.
      Morgen wird der Rest von Madrid erkundet.
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    • Day 15

      Madrid #03

      April 30 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

      Unser dritter Tag hier in Madrid hat es wirklich in sich gehabt. So kunstbeflissen waren wir schon lange nicht!
      Begonnen haben wir beim Königspalast. Den haben wir zwar nur nochmals von außen besichtigt - die Schlange für den Eintritt war gefühlt 1 Kilometer lang - aber wir haben ausgiebig die schöne Catedral de la Almudena besichtigt.
      Danach sind wir zum Templo de Debod, einem kleinen Ägyptischen Tempel gewandert. Dafür mussten wir unzählige Stufen bezwingen. Dafür hat man von dort oben eine tolle Aussicht in Richtung Königspalast.
      Nach so einer schweißtreibenden Wanderung war Stärkung angesagt. Da war ein super gutes Steak gerade das Richtige, auch Thomas hat es gut vertragen. 🥰
      Nach einem gemütlichen Kaffee waren wir eigentlich schon ziemlich müde, aber nix da, es fehlte ja noch was in unserer Madridsammlung…
      Richtig! Das Museo Nacional del Prado!
      Und so wurde das riesige, sehr beeindruckende Museum mit seinen unzähligen Gemälden unser letzter Sightseeing Stop.
      Schön war’s in Madrid und das Wetter hat auch recht brav mitgespielt.
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    • Day 13

      Madrid #01

      April 28 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

      Unser erster Halbtag in Madrid. Wir haben am Campingplatz Osuna eingecheckt, ein typischer Stadtcampingplatz eben. Aber die Metro ist fußläufig erreichbar. So sind wir am Nachmittag gleich in die City gedüst und haben uns einen ersten Eindruck verschafft. Nach der Durchquerung des Plaza Major mussten wir uns im Mercado stärken, mhhh war das gut!
      Zum Königspalast sind wir auch noch spaziert. Dort wollten wir uns eigentlich auch noch die dazugehörigen Gärten anschauen, sind dann aber bei einer akrobatischen Vorführung regelrecht hängen geblieben. Naja, morgen ist ja auch noch ein Tag.
      Zufrieden mit den ersten Eindrücken sind wir wieder zur Metro geschlendert.
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    • Day 3

      Exploring Madrid!

      May 15 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 54 °F

      We may need to move to Madrid! Such a cool area to visit explore.

      Today is a holiday so tons of people out and a show in the town square.

      Visited the King and Queen of Spain in their palace. Asked if I could rent a room for my summer getaway. They said no. I’ll keep asking.

      Found my new Starbucks to have meetings in Spain. I’ll start setting up 1:1’s

      Saw store with all rubber ducks. Never knew this was a high demand product. Starting to think how I could make a million by selling random items. Haven’t come up with anything yet.

      Started my 42 day devo I put together for my sabbatical. I sense God has some special things in store during these special times. Maybe he will call me to open up a rubber duck store.

      Love Spain food. That’s it. Just love it.

      Explored the churches. They are beautiful. Seems more like a relic and religion. Made me wonder how many people see Jesus as a religion. Asked Jesus to always be real to me. Sometime these relics remind me how easy it is to make Jesus a relic that you visit than a relationship you experience.

      Oh one last thing. Found a room in the palace that had a dinner table with 100+ chairs. I thought this would be a perfect place for a potluck. Going to try to convince them to let me have one.
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    • Day 53

      Santiago to Madrid

      June 12, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 36 °C

      I caught an early taxi to the airport for my 9.20am flight to Madrid. We walked alongside the airport on the last leg of the Camino but it seemed much further in the taxi.

      I then caught the airport bus to Atocha Station and my hotel is just a short walk away. It’s another great room with big windows and a balcony overlooking the plaza.

      It’s very hot. I had a walk around the neighbourhood and another gigantic pizza for lunch (and the rest for dinner).

      After a brief siesta I went for a walk through some of Retiro Park and then through the Botanical Gardens. I joined the queue for the free entry into the Prado (every day for the last two hours of opening) but they reached the quota when I was almost at the front of the line. I will try again tomorrow. I have found that entry to most places is greatly reduced for the over 65s so it is fairly economical to go to most museums and galleries.

      Although it is Sunday a lot of shops were open and Madrid is very busy. It is an entirely different pace to my time in Spain so far and I am looking forward to seeing more tomorrow.

      Sleep’n Atocha
      10 kms
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    • Day 6

      Welcome (back) to Madrid

      May 13 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

      Hola from Madrid.
      I think we deserve a pat on the back for catching 2 trains today and navigating ourselves through the Madrid metro. Quite worried when you have to go through electronic gates, and there's no way back without paying if you get it wrong.
      I know how a cull cow feels now.
      A good result, anyway, emerging into 27 degrees sunshine from the underground, a short walk to the hotel .
      Interestingly, they're still predominantly cork top wine bottles; we haven't had a cork screw for the last 3 days, quite the crisis.
      The supermercado was several floors and required taking this baby trolley up and down ramps. Got these cool wheels that self lock on the elevator, so no brakes are required. Great engineering 👍.
      Mainly a traveling, admin, and maintenance (aka wine) day today. Sorted our data after not being able to buy a sim card over the weekend. Bugger.
      We're now on a European sim, New phone number, same email.
      Hot tip (not); I've noticed many shop counters have chairs around them. I think you're supposed to patiently pull up a pew and wait until they get to you. Commonly 4 plus in a que. Not sure I enjoy this aspect of Spanish culture. God help us if kiwis latch onto it.
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    • Day 7

      Madrid, On and Off

      May 14 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

      A day on the hop on/ off bus. It seemed the most practical way to view this city of 6.7m people.
      The footpaths outside our hotel are 10m wide, and you still struggle to walk side by side in a forward direction.
      Apparently, the Spanish economy is going pretty well by EU standards, and people seem pretty happy. Noticeable they seem to take pride in their appearance and not a lot of homeless about considering the population. Very well presented bunch with quite different clothing choices to NZ.
      I think they could employ a few more gardeners, though, as the current lot don't seem to have come back from the Christmas break. A bit of round up wouldn't go amiss.
      Some impressive green spaces all the same, which we mostly enjoyed more than the history on offer.
      The local cuisine went down a treat tonight, Pintxos ( tapas ) were delivered every few minutes, and they just kept coming. A bit of a trap for a country lad that likes an empty plate!
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    • Day 8

      Segovia and Avila day trip.

      May 15 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

      A day trip out to Segovia in the north west to view an 1800 year old Aquaduct and Cathedral. Both are very impressive engineering features. No Cement in the Aquaduct makes it even more impressive. There are no earthquake engineering issues here, apparently.
      Onward to Avila to check out the longest city walls still in existence in Europe. Apparently, the ashes from cremations were used to fill the walls.
      We went to check out a museum on the way home but got turned away due to a festival starting tonight. Due to an early start tomorrow, I think we'll miss the fireworks tonight , we'll see.
      We checked out the Real Madrid stadium ( street view only) yesterday, but we're not big enough fans to justify the $75 pp entry fee to peek around the door.
      Off to Portugal tomorrow in keeping with the plan C itinerary.
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    • Day 52

      Madrid’s beautiful parks & gardens

      May 12, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 73 °F

      We spent the day wandering thru some of the most beautiful botanical gardens and parks today in Madrid. First went to the Jardin Botanical and then to El Retiro Park - both just gorgeous. Both had sections devoted to huge rose gardens and I can’t even describe the smells as we walked through. Very relaxing day, which was really needed after our push thru Paris and Bordeaux.

      Figuring out food in these different countries has almost become comical. We go to pretty authentic places, so most menus aren’t in English. Usually, we can kind of figure out what we’re ordering with google translate and such. But in Madrid especially, it’s been tough. Today’s lunch we had ZERO idea what we were actually going to be given, or even what was in it - ended up being really good, but makes for interesting times.
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    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Madrid, Мaдрид, ማድሪድ, Madrit, مدريد, ܡܕܪܝܕ, Мадрид, Горад Мадрыд, মাদ্রিদ, མ་ད་རིད།, Mā-dáik-lī, مەدرید, Madridi, Μαδρίτη, Madrido, Madril, Mairil, مادرید, Maidrid, Mâ-tet-lî, Makelika, מדריד, मद्रिद, Մադրիդ, MAD, マドリード, მადრიდი, ಮಡ್ರಿಡ್, 마드리드, Madrîd, Matritum, Madridas, Madride, മാഡ്രിഡ്, माद्रिद, မဒရစ်မြို့, Мадрид ош, म्याड्रिड, माद्री, ମାଡ୍ରିଦ, ਮਾਦਰੀਦ, Madryt, 28001, Мадрід, मद्रिद्, Madrids, மத்ரித், Madríd, มาดริด, Lungsod ng Madrid, مادرىد, میدرد, מאדריד, 馬德里

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