Arrived in Madrid lunchtime Thursday after arguably the most stressful hour any of us had ever spent in a car. Madrid while not an enormous metropolis takes traffic/road chaos to a whole new level, while simultaneously defeating any GPSs ability to keep up. After being led by Siri round the same 6 lane roundabout 5 times in search of the Avis car return yard, we followed a raft of taxis into the central railway station -Therein followed a lot of negotiation (begging really) on my part to convince a taxi driver to drive me to the Avis car hire – a mere 300m but apparently in a google maps black hole- and allow David to follow him in our rental. Not sure if my offer of 10 Euro clinched it or the fact I was desperately clinging to his door handle but either way he agreed and we were there. Found out later Rick and Bei had the exact same experience but a Good Samaritan local did it for them for free.

Most of Madrid so far has been walking and eating. The hotel is poorly located for the attractions but extremely well located for food/eateries. We have been eating our way around the local restaurants like true Spaniards- 2 to 3 course lunch round 1, siesta, then dinner round 8, sleep then repeat.

Madrid has everything on a much bigger scale than the other cities we’ve been to – it’s a city of monuments, and wide promenades spread out over. a large area. Regardless we’ve done our darndest to see the major sights over the last day and a bit.