Plaza Santa Ana

As per dinner last night, we were the only guests for breakfast. There was enough food there for a dozen people so we had to do our best to make it worthwhile for Theresa.

Jorge picked us up just before 9.30 am and we headed off to the railway station at Segovia. He told us quite a bit about his family, all musicians, and also the company. As I mentioned earlier we were the last of the walkers for 2018! His car showed that it was 2.5 degrees outside and we ran into quite a bit of fog on the way. Nevertheless it was an uneventful trip to the station and we arrived in plenty of time to catch the 10.12 train to Madrid.

Such an early start meant that we were very early to our hotel, Hotel Cortezo, just a few minutes away from Plaza Mayor, or the centre of old Madrid, at around 11.30 am. Our taxi driver spoke virtually no English (fair enough) so it was a fairly quiet trip.

Arriving at the hotel we fronted the desk, hoping that at least we could leave our luggage there until a room became available, but luck was with us as usual, and there was a room ready. Off we went, up the lift, went to our room, and found it was a twin room. Oh well, better that than having to worry about finding another one, or leaving our luggage there.

Being so early meant that we had virtually three days in Madrid, a real bonus. Being so close to Plaza Mayor we headed there, but it seemed that half of Madrid had the same idea. As we got closer we could hear singing, and I don’t mean rock and roll. It turned out that we arrived on the day of the patronage festival of San Isidro, the patron saint of Madrid. The Plaza was packed and the Archbishop was in the middle of saying Mass. There was no room so we headed back towards our hotel area. Puerta Del Sol seemed a pretty good place to go, so we walked there, not far, and had a look around. The place was infested with shoe shops, and as Robyn has wanted to buy a new set of boots we started looking. Two shops later she found a lovely pair, in her size, so this was a great relief to me. Not only were they made in Spain, but we found them quickly and that meant that there was no more shoe shopping to be done!

We stopped for a coffee in Puerta Del Sol and then went back to Plaza Mayor where things seemed to have quietened down. Actually they had all made their way to the Cathedral, so we followed. We found the bells ringing (or is that clanging) seriously as the procession made its way towards the entrance to the Cathedral. We settled ourselves into a position near the entrance and watched as the procession made its way, led by the local brass band to the big ramp into the Cathedral. It was an amazing experience being surrounded by thousands of locals, many of whom were obviously quite religious, as they performed their annual ritual.

When it was over we went for a long walk to get the feel of the place, and picked up information about the Madrid Red Bus tours. We will definitely do this tour tomorrow, being recent converts to this activity.

During the afternoon we had been looking at restaurants in the local area, focusing on tapas. Pete said a few days ago that one of his regrets is that he never had time in Madrid, the tapas capital of the world. Well, we are trying to make up for that, and we found a nice place about a hundred metres down the road. It was an experience, although a bit touristy, but we enjoyed it immensely.Read more