This week we finished off our time in Spain in Madrid, then set out for the north.
We left Santiago de Compostela and drove through the green, foggy mountains onto the flat and surprisingly also green plain of central Spain. We stopped in Segovia, a beautiful town with a perfectly preserved Roman aqueduct, a confection of a cathedral, and a 19th-century Romantic idea of a medieval castle. It’s a great city just an hour’s drive from Madrid.
We drove through a mountain range to the main event: Madrid. There was a huge rain storm, followed by driving the highway that goes for several km under the city center. They routed the traffic underground so that most of the center is pedestrian only–one of our favorite things about Europe! We arrived at our AirBnB, got the car parked, and were tucked into our little apartment. We had just started unpacking when the massive rainstorm that we encountered in the mountains caught up with us again. It was dramatic!
We set off to find live music, but it found us as soon as we got on the metro—there was a guy busking on our train car. We wandered around a bit, but it was mostly a quiet Monday night, so we settled for a very tasty pizza and turned in. The next morning, we headed for the center of Madrid and a walking tour. We were in the city for a few days in 2019, but there was much of it that we didn’t remember so well. We visited the famous places, like Plaza Mayor and the Gran Via. We didn’t;t save any time for the museums (again), but we did have some good food and enjoyed our lunch at an Argentinian steakhouse. We decided on the spur of the moment to go see a musical and we chose to see a production of Gypsy, directed by Antonio Banderas and entirely in Spanish. Nathan played in the pit orchestra for a production 30 years ago and I saw it a couple times, so we both knew what was happening. Nathan likes to challenge himself with the foreign languages he’s studying. I just enjoyed the interesting staging and the listening to the superfast dialogue.
From Madrid, we caught a flight to London. We were ultimately bound for Southampton to board another cruise ship. I’ll tell you all about our England and Scandinavian adventures next week. Happy Mother’s Day to all you dear ladies and I’ll talk to you next week!
We Are Family
If we were done with our travels, I would take the next two weeks to relate our adventures in Romania and Switzerland. But we have more things coming up, so this is going to be a longer post. I’ll give you the highlights first, and then you can read on if you want more details.
Slower, With a British Accent
We’ve been in London since we left the cruise ship. This week was a bit slower and a welcome break from the last six weeks of constant movement. We’ve had some fun, eaten some good food, caught up on sleep, and made plans for the summer.
Baltic Beauty
The last post was all about the first half of our cruise and now I’ll tell you about the rest. We stopped in Helsinki, Tallinn, and Kristiansand and there was another unexpected change of plans.