Photo Album for Toledo, Spain

Click below to see some of the beautiful pictures of Toledo!!

Madrid Photo Album

Hey Everyone,

Thought I'd try a new way to post pictures by creating an album so you can see all of them rather than just putting a few in each entry. When you click on the picture, it takes you to Picasa Web where I've created the album. When it opens, you'll see all the pictures and you can click on "slideshow" on the upper left.

Here's the first one for Madrid so let me know what you think........

Enjoy!

A really educational day

Sigrid’s husband Alfred had decided to take Friday off and offered to show us some of the sights around Berlin this morning and then we would head out that afternoon to tour a local concentration camp. But first, breakfast! Now, Alfred had asked us the night before if we wanted a regular breakfast with bread or something more adventurous. Before we could think about it, we told him whatever he felt like would be fine. So, we woke to a spread on the dining room table that can best be described as a Japanese breakfast, as he was very enamored of Japan after having visited there twice. Laid out before us were plates of raw vegetables, salmon, bowls of miso soup, rice, seaweed and hot coffee. As my eyes took everything in, I remembered last night he had asked us if we’d ever tried raw meat & onions (clearly not a Japanese thing……maybe German? I’m not sure) and to my utter horror/astonishment, there was a plate of ground meat and onions, formed into little patties that he explained went beautifully with the rice and seaweed. To his credit, he had gotten up very early that morning and gone to the butcher’s shop to pick up the ground meat and he reassured us we did not need to be concerned about getting sick from it. Okey dokey…….well, when in Berlin, do as the Berliners do, right? We politely picked up some of the meat with our chopsticks and mixed it in with the rice and down the hatch it went. I can’t say we ate that much of it, but at least I was able to take a few bites and it didn’t taste awful, just more of a texture shock, if you know what I mean. The rest of the meal was actually quite good although certainly different from what we were used to. Funny the types of foods you typically associate with breakfast and which you don’t, huh?

After breakfast, Alfred accompanied us on the train to where the Berlin Wall used to stand and the infamous Check Point Charlie station, where American and East German soldiers used to face off. This truly was a fascinating history lesson and having a personal guide with us like Alfred, who lived through the tearing down of the wall, was priceless. For several blocks around the area, you can read informational panels about the origins of the wall and the events leading up to it’s fall. Alfred remembered clearly that night in 1989 when the formal decision was made to allow East Berliners to come across the wall into West Berlin, many of whom had been separated from families and friends for years, and the thousands of people lined up on the east side waiting to cross. Also in that area he showed us the building that Hitler used for his headquarters and where he killed himself at the end of the war. After visiting that part of the city, we wished we had had more time to learn about all the history that’s there, but maybe another trip.
After that, we parted ways at the train station and Jim and I continued on to visit a concentration camp on the northern fringes of Berlin. It is one of the oldest concentration camps and they have done an excellent job documenting what happened there. I must say, it’s one thing to read about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war, but something else entirely to actually walk the grounds where such evil took place. From what I gathered, this camp was originally meant as a “work camp” where political dissidents and others whom the Nazis deemed as unfit were sent to serve as free labor for the war effort, and then as they weakened from overwork and torture, were sent on to some of the more infamous camps, such as Auschwitz and Berkenau. By the end of the war, though, people were being killed in this camp as well, many being shot by firing squads. Apparently, the Nazis brought in portable ovens to burn all the dead bodies and one particularly gruesome story mentioned them using the leftover ashes to repave some of the grounds and roads around the camp. Also on the grounds were medical facilities where some of the horrendous “experiments” where carried out on prisoners. I remembered being sickened by one account where they wanted to understand the effects of gangrene and how to treat it so they took pieces of straw contaminated with bacteria then cutting incisions into the prisoners upper arms and sewing the straws up under their skin. Just when you thought man’s inhumanity towards other men couldn’t get any worse, right?

After that sobering afternoon, we headed back to Sigrid and Alfred’s to enjoy some wine and look at pictures from their many travels. We were treated to a visit by their daughter Kathy and her 4 month old son as well. Kathy is a really sweet girl and is finishing law school soon. Apparently, the plan is for her to help Alfred out in his office, since he’s an attorney also, so he and Sigrid can take some more time off to travel. Since Sigrid is a self employed doctor, she has a little more flexibility with her schedule, so they’re really looking forward to their future travel plans. They showed us pictures of Cuba, Mongolia, India and Japan, which all looked like great places to visit! It was a wonderful finish to our visit to Berlin, which we will certainly remember for a long time!

I’m writing this on the train to Prague and am starting to get pretty sleepy. We stayed up until about midnight looking at pictures and had to get up at 4:15 to catch our early morning train so were just a little sleepy as you can imagine……..the sun has risen and the landscape outside looks REALLY cold, with frost and ice everywhere. Might be time to head further south after Prague if this keeps up!!

Did we just eat bugs???!!!

Had a busy day today getting to a coffee shop that had wifi (Starbucks, of course) so we could get online and make our final arrangements for Prague. We connected with a very nice woman who lives in Prague who has offered to put us up in her house for two nights, so we’ll stay with her Saturday and Sunday and then we found a studio apartment to rent in the old part of Prague for the next four nights. I made sure it had a washing machine, cuase by then, it’ll be time!!

We had made arrangements to take Sigrid and Alfred to dinner tonight in appreciation for hosting us. We did not get a chance to meet Alfred yesterday since he came home after us and went straight to bed. We let them decide where to go for dinner and they decided on a new restaurant in a nearby town called Sydney, which was designed around an Australian theme. Picture Outback Steakhouse and you’ll get the idea. The menu had all sorts of meats that you wouldn’t find in the States - or in the rest of Germany I would guess for that matter. Kangaroo filets were actually on the menu so I decided to be live on the edge and dine on the national mascot of Australia. That, though, was only the beginning our culinary adventure…..you see, Sigrid had mentioned when we were chatting yesterday about a salad they make which is sprinkled with - take a deep breath everyone - deep fried crickets. If I’m lyin, I’m dyin. Remember now, these are adventurous folks who have traveled all over the world and throughout much of Asia, so they’ve tried quite a number of highly unusual foods, at least by Western standards. So what does she order for the table? You guessed, it cricket surprise. Of course, she’s ordering in German, so I had no idea what was coming until the server put it on the table. Imagine just your ordinary, run of the mill green salad, with tomato, cucumber, lettuce, and oh, what’s that? A small pile of fried crickets in one corner of the bowl, about an inch long. Yeah. And before I could magically wish the bowl to dissolve into thin air, our very friendly hosts made sure to offer each of us one, insisting we just had to try them. Talk about being put on the spot!! As I tried to stammer through some sort of protest that wouldn’t offend them, I finally gave up and just put my hand out, as did Jim and before I could take any time to think about it or look too long at little Jiminy Cricket, I popped him in my mouth and crunched away. I don’t think we could accurately describe the taste except to say it wasn’t really bad, but just tasted like some sort of fried something. Of course, I didn’t let the little sit on my tongue for too long before swallowing right away and taking a big, long gulp of beer.

Two thoughts occurred to me during the rest of the evening. The first was I had noticed at one point a fly was buzzing around the table and I wondered - if it were to land on the cricket and take a bit, would that be like canibalism? The second was I remembered when I was a kid we would occasionally get a cricket in the house and my mother would never kill it, but gently cup it in her hands and release it outside and here I was eating one. What would Mom think?

So there you have it. We’re in Germany, at an Australian-themed restaurant and I’m eating kangaroo and crickets. I guess everyday is truly and adventure…….

Berlin

After a very smooth 1 hour flight between Amsterdam and Berlin, we were met at the airport by Sigrid, who was holding a sign with “David & Jim” on it. She is an absolutely delightful person and I think we hit it off right away. We gathered our bags and piled into her car for the short drive to house which she shares with her husband, Alfred. It was evident from a few rather large piles of snow in the area they had had some substantial snow not that long ago and Sigrid explained it has been a particularly cold and snowy winter for them. They live in a lovely little town called Eichwalde, which translated means “Oak Wood”, hence all the oak forest in the area. It’s a small town just southeast of Berlin and has a very charming small town feel. She immediately made us feel right at home, showing us to our room which is on the second floor of the house. We have a very comfortable room with a double bed in it which used to be their daughter’s, and the bathroom is right across the hall - all in all, a very private set up which we weren’t sure we would get with the couch surfing crowd! The house was built in the 1930’s and has all the charm of that era for sure.

Sigrid & Alfred LOVE to travel as well and from the looks of all the amazing artwork in their home, they have clearly been all over the world. She explained that she is from Germany originally but her parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio when she was a small girl and so she grew up there. As an adult, she wanted to learn more about her German heritage so she came back to Germany and never left. She told us that she is currently teaching a German man English and was hoping we’d be willing to sit down with her and her student over a glass of wine and help him practice his English - well of course we said yes! So we’ll see when she organizes that…..

She educated us about the train and metro system and told us the train station was a short 10 minute walk from their house, which then connects up with a metro station with trains running right into the center of Berlin. Get this - she actually walked us to the train station to make sure we knew where to go and explained which train to get on! If that wasn’t sweet enough, while we were buying our tickets at the station, we heard her greeting a man and woman who she introduced to us as friends of her’s who live in the town. Their names are Maria and Wolfe and apparently they were taking the train into town to visit an art exhibit and Sigrid asked if they wouldn’t mind helping us make sure we got off at the right stop. Human kindness really does overflow at times…….

Wishing us a fun day, she left us to board the train with Maria and Wolfe, whom I would guess were in their early 60‘s. Now I have to tell you, they were the sweetest couple you could ever meet. She basically knew no English except for a word or two and he could speak some basic English but not a whole lot. That didn’t stop them, though, from giving us an extra map they had of the metro system and explaining again which stop to get off. It was really adorable how she would smile at us and think of something we might enjoy seeing in the city, which she would explain to Wolfe, who would then translate what she said as best he could into English. Suffice it to say, our conversations were somewhat stunted but you could really tell they wanted to chat as much as they could.

Well, we got off at the right stop and then transferred to a subway line that took us right where we needed to go. Now, I hadn’t thought to change into my long underwear before we left their house so I wasn’t quite as layered as I would have liked to have been and let me tell you - I could have used it!! It was REALLY cold and wet today and actually snowed for awhile as we walked around the city. However, we did make it to the famous Brandenburg Gate which truly is an amazing monument to behold. Of course, as I went to take a picture, the camera battery died reminded me that I forgot to charge it up last night!! Oh well - Jim was able to snap some good pictures on his phone and we’ll be back in the area with the charged up camera in the next couple of days I’m sure……..from our brief foray today Berlin seemed like a very lovely city. The streets were incredibly clean and at least the parts of the city where we were had wide open sidewalks which made it really easy to get around. At the worst of the snow, we luckily found a Starbucks (go figure) right across from the Brandenburg Gate to tuck into and have a warm coffee while we looked out on the square. All in all, a perfect afternoon really.

Easy Jet

It’s been an interesting experience flying EasyJet, which offers insanely low cast fares throughout Europe. Think of it as Europe’s equivalent of Southwest Airlines. For example, we booked one way fares from Barcelona to Amsterdam for about 44 euros (about $60) and a similarly low far between Amsterdam and Berlin. When I first saw these fares, I wondered how they can possibly manage to make any money doing this, but as we’ve flown them, I’m beginning to see how they recover some of their costs. First of all, they have a VERY strict carry on policy and the size you can bring on the plane is somewhat smaller than what we’ve experienced with U.S. airlines. So, we ended up checking our two rolling backpacks and just carrying on the smaller ones. Come to find out, there’s a charge for each checked bag and the cheapest way to do that is to pay online when you book the flight. In our case, that was 22 euros per bag, which would have cost twice that much if we had checked the bags at the airport.

The next interesting thing about EasyJet is that when get to the departure area, they don’t list ahead of time what gate your flight is leaving from. Your boarding pass tells you at what time you can start boarding, but they don’t announce which gate you’re leaving from until the plane has landed. I guess that saves them money and time by not having to assign gates ahead of time? Anyway, once you get on board, there is NOTHING for free, not even peanuts or water. You are very nicely told there is a charge for everything. If that’s not enough, they come down the aisle with a duty free cart right after that announcing all the other goods you can buy while on the plane - it’s like an ongoing sales pitch! Too much…….but I’m not complaining, since it’s still probably the most economical way to fly around Europe. I think the final cost for both of us to fly from Barcelona to Amsterdam and then to Berlin, including the checked bags was about $250.

On a side note, security measures are also a little different when you fly through European airports. Going through the Amsterdam airport, we did not have to take off our shoes (I also recall this was the case in Australian airports as well - must be an American thing because of the shoe bomber guy) but we did go through the full body scan which was interesting. Anyway…….

We’re planning on taking the train between Berlin and Prague so we’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Amsterdam

Often called “The Venice of the North” Amsterdam certainly lives up to it’s reputation. Canals, canals everywhere! Amsterdam has turned out to be exactly what we both expected, with charming streets lining the canals and quaint bridges joining both sides. We’ve enjoyed strolling along, visiting all the interesting neighborhoods and yes - we did walk through the Red Light District. As many of you know, prostitution is legal here, so there is a specific part of town where the ladies of the evening - and I’m assuming men but we didn’t see any - stand in windows with red lights on above them telling prospective customers that they’re available. While we didn’t see anyone actually propositioning them, from what we’ve learned the person interested somehow works out the price with the through the window and if they’re agreeable, in they go. I guess the women have rooms upstairs where they conduct their business.

The other interesting thing about Amsterdam is the coffee houses all over town which offer marijuana for sale, which is also legal here. Again, we weren’t interesting in partaking, but as you walked by the open doors, you sure could smell what was going on in there!

We also enjoyed taking a canal boat tour through town today. It was about an hour long and took us out to Amsterdam Harbor as well as up and down many of the canals through the city. The audio guide pointed out interesting facts about the canals as well as houses and buildings along the way. We head to wait our turn, though, to hear what was being said as the audio is in Dutch, German, French and Italian as well as in English! Some interesting facts we heard were:

• Amsterdam has 1200 bridges in the city and 2500 houseboats. The city has placed a limit on the number of houseboats so that's all there will be in the future.
• The canals are 2-3 meters deep.
• Because all the houses are so narrow and because in the past most of the supplies people needed arrived by boat on the canal, all houses are equiped with a hoisting beam at the top of the building so they could hoist their furniture, etc. to the roof and then into their homes.

The other interesting thing about Amsterdam, as you all know, is there are a TON of bikes and people bike everywhere! The typical street is divided up into sections, with a wide sidewalk for pedestrians, then a lane for bikes, then a lane for cars, tram lines in the middle. Very logical setup!

Well, we fly out tomorrow morning to Berlin where we'll be staying with a woman named Sigrid and her family who we connected with on couchsurfing.com. She sounds really nice so we'll let you now how it goes.......

Use #47 for plastic water bottles

This is backtracking a bit, but I wanted to share with you how we added a personal touch to our room in Barcelona with flowers we e purchased at the local market. We didn't have a vase in the room so what to do.....hmmm.......oh, we have our old water bottle. Out come the scissors and - drum roll please - we have a vase!

Laundry Day

We knew it would be time to do laundry once we arrived in Amsterdam, so after getting settled into our room at the Qbic Hotel, we went downstairs to find out where we could go. The very helpful guy at the front desk got on the computer and searched for a nearby laundromat and was excited to find one near where he lives so he could easily give us directions. Here's what he said:

Take the #50 train by the hotel headed towards Isolatorweg.

Get off at the Lelylaan station.

Walk down to the tram stop below the train station and take tram #17 headed towards Dyhgraafplein.

Get off at the Johan Huizingalaan stop.

Walk down to #100 Johan Huizingalaan and we would find the laundromat called “Wassery”.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Actually, it was just that easy. We dressed in the cleanest things we had, which by this point were our exercise pants (too cold to jog and besides, we are doing a LOT of walking these days!) and t shirts. Since it is rather chilly out, we bundled up in our jackets, scarves and gloves…..don’t you know we were a sight! We packed all our other clothes into our bags and off we went, rolling our dirty laundry behind us.

What the nice guy at the front desk didn’t tell us was that this place was sort of a place where people go to drop off their laundry, not necessarily to do it themselves. When we walked in, a fellow was working there with his younger employee in a small space with seven washing machines and three super giant dryers. His English wasn’t very good but he explained that it cost 10 euros for them to do our laundry for us and 8 euros if we did it ourselves. We explained that we would do it ourselves, which I don’t think made him too happy, but he went ahead and gave us two washers to use once the clothes that were in them were finished and we went to work. Fortunately, they provided the laundry soap so at least we didn’t have to worry about that!

So here we are sitting in two of only three chairs they have in the place, waiting for the clothes to dry (fortunately, all the laundry fit into one of the mondo dryers). Since we hadn’t had any breakfast yet, Jim was kind enough to walk to the bakery next door and get us a couple of ham and cheese croissants. Sadly, we had to make do with a Coke Light (Diet Coke in Euro speak) from the vending machine since the bakery didn’t have any coffee…..sigh. I guess we’ll just have to get our coffee fix later.

Oh, the glamorous life of travel, right????

P.S.: Since then, as we've walked the streets of the old city, we've come across two regular ole' laundromats......go figure......

Our Cool Budget Hotel in Amsterdam

We arrived comfortably in Amsterdam at about 12:20 this afternoon from Barcelona. The weather was a bit more like we would expect in Seattle this time of year - kind of grey and cool, with highs probably in the low 40's at most. Oh well, gotta expect that, right? We are in Northern Europe in January afterall!

Jim found an amazing new hotel that has been designed for budget travelers. It's called Qbic Hotel and it's about 15 minutes away from the city by train, and the station is right around the corner. It's actually located in the Amsterdam World Trade Center complex and occupies about 4 floors in the building. You can check yourself in if it's after hours, but since we were here mid afternoon, a very helpful and nice guy was working in the lobby and got us all set up. As you can see from the pictures, it's pretty sleek and modern design inside but the innovative thing is the bed and bathroom are basically a one piece "cube" inside the room with some basic furnishings in the rest of the room. Apparently the guy who started this is hoping to grow the idea since I guess it doesn't cost much to create rooms like this. I guess they must bring the cubes into the room and assemble them on sight. You can change teh colors of the lighting in the room to refect your room and the view is out onto the courtyard of the WTC.

Now, what you may have noticed by now from the picture is that there is no door on the bathroom, which is right behind the bed. Exactly........that's what we thought when we first walked in but then we thought, no we can make this work - especially for about the equivalent of $60 a night! So the new rule of the house while we're here is that if one of us has to go to the bathroom to......well, you know......then the other person has put in his earphones and listen to music until the other person gives the all clear. Ahh, the things we do for love........

Me Gusto Mucho Barcelona!!

It's been a really enjoyable couple of days in Barcelona. We were only briefly here about five years ago at the end of a very hectic week so we never really had an opportunity to explore the city and surrounding areas. We're staying at the Crystal Hotel, which is really well situated a block from the famous Las Ramblas Boulevard and has easy access to the Metro. I guess since it's low season, they very nicely put us in a room with a terrace, which we didn't even ask for. The terrace is huge, about 13X18!

This visit has certainly satisfied our senses and more. Much like Madrid, Barcelona has lovely, broad tree lined boulevards and is a very walkable city. It has an excellent Metro system, like Madrid, and it's such an easy way to get around the city. One thing that is different is that often the middle of the streets are blocked off for pedestrians and the cars just drive on either side of these islands and in the middle are all these outdoor sitting areas for the restaurants that line the street. Since it's a little chilly this time of year, we have really appreciated the outdoors heaters when we've sat down for tapas!! Don't get me started on the Spanish wines either.......yummy........

We've had the opportunity to visit Antoni Gaudi's famous works here, such as the Familia Sagrada Cathedral and Casa Mila. Today we'll be visiting Park Guell as well which I'm really looking forward to. The Familia Sagrada is an absolutely overwhelming sight and one of those must see things to do (in my humble opinion :-)) He started it in 1882 knowing he would not live to see it finished and, in fact, it's still under construction today. Estimates are that it might be finished in 25 years! Guess we'll have to come back and see the finished product!

Casa Mila is an apartment complex that he designed which many refer to as "the melting ice cream building". He also lived there for many years and we were able to tour his apartment as well as the rooftop terrace.

Yesterday, we took the train to Figueres, which is where the Salvador Dali museum is. It's about a 2 hour train ride north of here and it was SO worth it. I had had a passing familiarity with his work and always thought it was very creative, but so much of it in one place really blew me away. I think both Jim and I are huge fans of surrealist art now! His works are just so wild and whimsical - right up my alley. It was impressive how many different mediums he worked with - pencil sketches, water color, acrylic, and sculpture as well. He also made jewelry which was absolutely spectacular to see.

I'll do a separate posting with pictures from the Familia Sagrada as well as the Dali museum so this posting won't be a mile long!

Tomorrow we fly to Amsterdam in the morning and we'll be there for a few days. Then we're trying out couchsufing for the first time in Berlin with a very nice couple who offered to let us stay with them so that will be an adventure I'm sure!

Madrid to Barcelona

We had a 12:30 train to catch from Madrid to Barcelona so we checked out around 10 a.m. and headed to the train station. Since we love mass transit of all kinds, this waas a real treat to ride the high speed AVE train. It travels as fast as 276 km an hour, but so smooth you can sleep like a baby and believe me, with that gentle rocking motion, you really do! We arrived in Barcelona in just under 3 hours, got settled into our hotel room and stretched our legs walking up and down the famous Las Ramblas boulevard, which was just as fun and lively as we remembered from our very brief stay here about five years ago. The weather seems a bit warmer than it was in Madrid and not as breezy, so it made dining al fresco much more pleasant. Tomorrow we're planning to see the highlights of the city and we're really looking forward to seeing the famous Gaudi cathedral, La Familia Sagrada.

Tapas and Churros con Chocolate

I mentioned before that we have been enjoying our tapas in Spain, and a very charming custom of theirs is that when you sit down, they always bring you a complimentary small plate of something to nibble on before you order your tapas. Often this will be a small plate of marinated olives but as you can see in this picture, one place we visited offered us a plate of tasty shrimp as well as olives. I know - the worst part is the ENTIRE shrimp is served which is certainly something that we're not used to in the U.S. but Jim was a real trooper and offered to peel them for the rest of us so we wouldn't have to. The only other experience I can relate this to is when you go into a Mexican restaurant and they bring chips and salsa to the table. I find it to be such a welcoming gesture - as if they're thanking you for coming into their restaurant.

The other treat we HAD to indulge in is the Spanish tradition of churros with chocolate. Although it is a very common sweet treat all over the city, lucky for us that Tina and Sharon had Rick Steve's travel book on Spain with them and he listed a couple of his favorite places to get the sweet treets in Madrid. We visited one of the places he recommended twice and loved it! Basically, churros are long strips of dough that are deep fried and served with cups of hot, thick chocoate for dipping. I'd say it's almost as thick as pudding, but not quite. Mmmm.mmmm good!! The place is open really late and is very popular with local and tourists alike. In many ways, it reminded me of going to Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans - a local tradition you just can't miss out on.

Toledo, Spain

We got a pretty early start to the day since were planning on taking the high speed train from Madrid to Toledo, which is about a 30 minute trip and we wanted to have a full day there to really appreciate it. From our hotel, which sits right on the edge of the Porto del Sol square, we walked to the Metro subway stop on the other side off the square. Like so many great European cities - as well as cities on the East Coast of the U.S. - Madrid has an amazingly clean and efficient subway system. For 1 euro each, we got a one way ticket and quickly found the right subway line which connected with the train station about four stops away. Once at the train station, we purchased round trip tickets to Toledo for just under 20 euros a person. Our train left at 9:20 this morning and we planned on taking the 6:30 train back to Madrid. Let me tell you, these new high speed trains are phenomenal!! They are really clean and comfortable and we were able to sit with all four of us facing each other, which made the trip much more enjoyable. The trains seem to start up with a whisper and in no time, the Spanish countryside is speeding past you. It’s so darn quiet you’d think you were floating along on the tracks!!

Since it was still early in the morning, there was quite a bit of morning fog that stayed with us much of the way. As we pulled into Toledo, we missed out on the gorgeous view of the midievil city that’s clustered around a hilltop due to the heavy fog. We didn’t worry too much about it since the train station itself was an amazing sight to behold. Built around 1912, it has many Moorish features borrowed from the early Arabic settlers of the area.

All I can say is, Toledo was everything we expected and more. It is absolutely one of the most spectacular examples of a European city that seems to have remained unchanged after hundreds of years. The city is build on a hill and is surrounded on three sides by the Rio Tojo river with bridges linking it to the outer, newer “suburbs”. We rode the tourist train around the city that despite seeming somewhat cheesy, turned out to be very informative and provided some great vantage points for pictures. We spent the rest of the day wandering the narrow, winding streets that provided all kinds of great “oooh, ahhh” photo opportunities. This place, in my humble opinion, is truly a must see for anyone coming to this part of Europe.

We had a really fun surprise when we arrived back in Madrid and took a walk through the train station. There was an area of the station that we hadn’t seen when we left in the morning and it was amazing!! This is the Atocha train station, which you may remember is the station that made the news when it was bombed a few of years ago. Apparently, there is quite a moving memorial to the victims of the bombing that we hope to see when we leave for Barcelona on Tuesday.

Our first full day in Madrid

Truly an amazing first day in Madrid. We woke to a cold, but sunny day and it was perfect weather for getting our bearings and seeing some of the major sights. We're staying at the Hotel Europa, which is situated on the Puerto del Sol square (Gate of the Sun) which also happens to be the geographic center of the city. Great suggestion, Pat & Julie! Of course, I had to include a picture of the room as well as the view from our very small balcony - we're talking just wide enough to stand on and see what's happening!

My first impression of Madrid is that it’s a very clean city and very, very walkable. I saw virtually no litter as we walked around and there were a large number of city works going on the streets cleaning and sweeping. The old part of the city certainly has that “old European” feel with beautiful boulevards punctuated by magnificent fountains and amazing amounts of architectural details on the buildings. It seems everywhere you look there is a statue at the top of a building or some other interesting detail that catches your eye.

Our first big stop was the Prado Museum, which I have to confess I knew little about before coming here. Turns out, it’s one of Europe’s most significant museum and ranks right up there with the Louvre in Paris. They were featuring a Renoir exhibit so we knew we would be viewing some amazing works of art. Now, the beauty of visiting Europe in the winter is you miss out on the massive crowds that are typical when you come here in the summer. Consequently, we only stood in line for about 15 minutes to get tickets to the exhibit for later that afternoon. We had tickets for 2:15 this afternoon so we had a couple of hours to kill and decided to visit the permanent collection at the Prado. They had a fantastic collection of Ruben’s paintings a well as a handful of other artists. When it came time to view the Renoir exhibit, we found it just as impressive. You’ll have to trust me on that since we couldn’t take any pictures inside!!

Our visit to the museum took a few hours and when it was over we took our time and casually strolled back to the hotel, taking our time to look into the windows and admire the beauty of this magnificent city. Then it struck us - what would be a better way to top off our first full day in Spain than with a tapas crawl and a flamenco performance??? So we popped into the first of two really great tapas restaurants. Actually, it seems every restaurant has a tapas menu and there are wonderful little restaurants all over the city. We found the tapas menus to be really quite reasonable - we have found you can typically get enough tapas to share between four people and a great bottle of wine for under 30 euros. Not a bad way to work your way through the city!!

The flamenco performance was really enjoyable as well. It took place in an intimate dinner theater space and we sat at a table that was no more than 10 feet from the stage. I would say the whole place only had about 15 tables. The performers consisted of two men singing traditional Spanish songs and three woman and one man dancing flamenco. All I can say is that if you haven’t had a chance to see a good flamenco performance, you HAVE TO GO. There is so much remarkable energy and intensity that comes through in the performance that it just draws you right in.

After the performance we stopped into another intimate restaurant for a late night dinner, which is also normal for the Spanish people. Typically, most folks here don’t even think about going out to dinner until after 10 p.m. and most restaurants stay open well after midnight!

Well, I can see this entry is probably dragging on WAY too long so I’ll wrap it up for now. We decided to take a day trip to Toledo tomorrow so that should be lots of fun…….