Madrid

And then to Madrid! First time in Spain for me and I loved it. It was warm and sunny and calm and reasonably friendly and reasonably cheap. The hotel was great - large room in a terrific location and a real bargain at bit over AUD400 for three nights. I\ll put a slide show up of photos. Day One we arrived and after waiting for an hour! at the airport for bags caught cab to hotel and they had a room for us ready even though it was only 8am. Coffee and croissants then out for a stroll around the block, back to room for a nap and then our first of three nights eating at the Plaza Santa Ana I'm sure very touristy but certainly not as bad as the La Plaza Mayor which was overpriced with restaurant staff doing their best Lygon Street tout impressions! So each night we tried a different restaurant, two lots of tapas and a real dinner another night. The food was ok nothing to rave about but very cheap and the wine even cheaper!
On Friday we bought two days worth of tickets on the tourist bus only to discover that on Saturday they were not running because of a "demonstration". We did the rounds on the bus a couple of times and then hopped off at La Plaza Mayor for lunch and a stroll around the outside of the Royal Palace -inside free exhibition on Spanish archeology which at least gave us some idea of Spanish history.
We thought we would save La Prada til Saturday as the buses were not running and that would be our big museum experience with maybe a side trip to the Matisse exhibition at Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

Of course we realised on Saturday that it was May Day, huge parade - I'd say 100s of thousands of people but no judge of crowd size - it was fantastic experience - sandy took photos of hammer and sickle flags which we don't often see in Oz, we wandered through the army headquarters which seemed to be open specially for the occasion. Unfortunately what was NOT open was La Prada - or any other museums either. Very disappointed to have missed it and then found out later that the museum that holds the most famous Spanish painting of all, Picasso´s "Guernica", was just around the corner from our hotel and that was also closed!! S
So not much "culture| but lots of excuses to go back - and I would any day - don't know what the rest of Spain is like but I loved Madrid!