Madrid

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From Toledo we headed up the autovia to Madrid and driving through the traffic we really noticed that this is a major city.

Our campsite, Camping Osuna, was about a 10-minute walk to the Metro and from there about 45 minutes into the centre of town. We headed in our first afternoon to the Palacio Real, which was free on a Wednesday. This is a huge and very ornate building – some of the rooms have amazing details. There is a pretty good armoury with suits of amour and the like, including some suits for kids!

Parque Retiro
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The next day we got ourselves a two-day open-top bus ticket that toured around the streets with a commentary in your headphones. A pretty good way to move around and get a feel for the city.

We visited the Reina Sofia gallery, which is modern art with a good collection of Dali (my favourite) and Picasso. I really enjoyed this gallery and even Ella was walking around ‘squawking’ at some of the sculptures ;-) Picassos famous Guernica is here but I must say it wasn’t really my thing. We also visited the Prado, which has a more traditional collection including El Greco and Goya.

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Behind the Prado is Parque Retiro, which is a beautiful formal park with a central lake complete with rowboats. There was lots of entertainment inside including Spanish Punch and Judy – a bit confusing for Jay…

I didn’t have big expectations for Madrid and was very pleasantly surprised by how big, interesting and generally nice the city was. All this without even sampling the legendary nightlife!

Dave.