29 April - Madrid to Ceret

After a fascinating few days in Spain, it was time to finally get back to our little retreat in France, for the last time unfortunately. There's not much to say about the trip north. It started with a walk of a few metres to get to the metro, a 3-stop trip to Madrid's Atocha Station, then a bit of a wait for the fast train to Barcelona Sants. We had heaps of time to spare between the train arriving on Barcelona, and the Flixbus connecting us to Perpignan, so we started with a coffee in a little cafe between the Arc de Triomph metro station and the Estacio del Norte bus station.

From there to our well-visited Bar Restaurant Napols for a menu del dia. In Spain these are very generous and all-inclusive. 13 Euros gives a big first course (lentils and ham, spag bol respectively), a meat second course (swordfish, and chicken, both with chips), then a choice of desserts, with wine or beer and bread included too. A very pleasant and enormous meal that we drew out to fill in some more time, then across the road to our Flixbus. 

Into Perpignan on time, with 2 minutes to spare to cross the car park for the 1E bus for Ceret. Finally a walk in the drizzle to our apartment, and inside just before 7pm having picked up a few essentials at the supermarket.

Our apartment was just as we'd left it. Rather nice to be back despite the grey, wet weather. We did a bit of basic unpacking, not that we had much to unpack given that we'd arrived with about half a bag-full between us. A simple bread and cheese meal, a bit of tennis on the TV and early to bed.

28th April - Central Madrid

After a few busy days, today was set to be an easier one. Our plan was to walk around the central area of Madrid, gazing at impressive edifices and wandering through some of the large plazas. The temperatures so far have been surprisingly low so we kitted ourselves out in the warmest gear we had (which wasn't much), topping it off with our Gore-Tex rain jackets. The sun was out but it was only 5 degrees when we stepped outside at 9am. Brrr.

We meandered our way to the Egyptian Templo de Debod which opened at 10am. It is a 2200 year old temple which has been faithfully transplanted, stone by stone, from Nubia. It was dismantled prior to the valley being flooded by the filling of the Aswan Dam. Spain had offered aid to Egypt after an appeal to save the temples, and in compensation Egypt gifted Spain the temple. We weren't expecting a queue but it was already 30-deep when arrived. The temple is very small and only 6 or so are allowed in at a time. 

Egyptian Temple of Debod

Many of the original hieroglyphics are still visible inside the structure. The temple was added to by two Roman emperors between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. It was well worth the 40 minute wait to get in and added interesting variety to the art and culture we have experienced during the last few days. 

It was still a very cold day when we exited the temple at 11.30am but the centre of the city was full of people enjoying a festive atmosphere. We happened to have struck the day of the Madrid marathon, half-marathon and 10km run. There were an unbelievable 21,000 participants, and just about everyone seemed to have a supporter on deck to cheer them on. It made for a very lively (and loud) scene, with the run courses bisecting many of the main plazas and following major roads which were closed to traffic. 

Royal Palace

We looped around the edges of crowds, managing to view the Royal Palace and its grounds, Plaza Major and a few other plazas, plus wandered along some of the main shopping streets. It was fun to be amongst the buzz. The buildings were quite monumental in scale and impressive in both size and style.

Our random route took us to the pretty Mercado San Miguel just on lunchtime. We have been there before, and were keen to revisit the range of food stalls on offer. It is a very popular place for people to select a variety of small servings from various stalls and then sit down and eat at shared tables, or at a bar with a beer. Unsurprisingly, it was super busy and we sampled half a dozen small tapas on toast. Most of them included cod and they were delicious. Only by 1pm was it warm enough to take our rain jackets off. We still felt the need to pop into a cafe for a coffee to warm up though, or, in the case of John, a beer did the trick. We bought some rolls at a nearby supermarket so we could make our own simple dinner. 

Mercado San Miguel

It's been an interesting time observing the Spanish as we've wandered about during the last few days. Everyone has been helpful and friendly and life feels fairly laid-back. Breakfast is typically taken around 10am and consists of a glass of orange juice, a coffee and a ham and cheese-filled croissant or bread roll. Cafes fill up from this time. From midday-ish, many are snacking on a pastry and enjoying a mid-sized beer. This morphs into lunch, often not started until 2-3pm, with more beer to accompany it. From 5pm the tapas bars are humming, with a small number of small servings washed down with beer or wine. The tapas bars are full until the restaurants start cranking up around 9pm. Socialising with family and friends is clearly a very popular exercise. All-in-all, I suspect the hospitality industry is pretty safe from any economic downturn. 

27 April - Museum Day in Madrid

A great day out visiting a couple of museums. We started the morning with a coffee in a nearby cafe, then headed to the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum. This is a fabulous collection of paintings, accumulated over a century by the Thyssen family, originally German industrialists. We've been to the Prado several times before, and have little interest in ghoulish religious paintings, or gigantic fantasy scenes from otherwise-forgotten myths, so wanted to try somewhere new. The T-B collection is a little different. Much of it is more recent, and the scale of the collection is a bit more manageable.

We arrived as the doors opened at 10, got our tickets and started off. The first room was of Dutch or Flemish painters, fascinating in their depiction of everyday life from the 17th century in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The paintings were almost all sparkling clean, and the detail was clear. We found it absorbing. From there we headed round the floors, heading up and up. It was very well laid-out, with rooms themed, for example a room of portraits, then a room of country scenes. It made for engrossing viewing.

Because the T-B family were very active from the late 19th century onwards, it has a great collection of art from that era, and we found we were able to follow the changes from old-style depiction of scenes to the brighter colours of the impressionists, then from the cubists to abstract and modern. We enjoyed it as much as any art museum we've visited, and ended up spending 2.5 hours working our way round.

Renoir

Pisarro

It was tricky getting out. There were very few sets of stairs, and we ended up going round and round. We noticed that the numbers which had been very sparse when we arrived had really built up, and began to think that people were constantly arriving, but nobody could find their way out!

Lunch was relatively early for here, at 1pm. We found a nice little place where we had beef cheeks and pulpo de gallega - Galician-style octopus with potatoes. Both were delicious, the latter one of the best dishes we've had for years.

Pulpo a la gallega

We had found out that another art museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts, was free for the last hour of its day, from 2pm to 3pm, and so we thought we'd have a look, and go back another day if an hour proved too short. As it turned out, the museum was quite small and an hour was perfect. Our tour began with a beautiful replica of a Valencian kitchen with astonishing tiles. 

There were rooms of tiles, glass, furniture, some superb Asian cabinets and a couple of lovely room settings. 

The final floor was dedicated to a small but very well-chosen collection of 20th-century objects and furniture. The Art Nouveau glassware that they displayed was of superb quality, and there was a great set of some of the best-ever 20th-century chairs, by such greats as Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel breuer, Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier and so on. Lovely to see.

As we were walking back about 3pm it was clearly the time Madrilenos go out for a drink with friends. The bars were packed, inside and out. The drink of choice is beer, even for women. Amazing to see a group of women on the street in the cold, drinking beers and yabbering 90 to the dozen.

The day was pretty cold, windy and with some heavy rain showers to boot. We wore all the warm clothing we had, keeping our rain jackets on all day, even when we were inside the museums. It made a big difference when the sun came out later in the day. 

We put our feet up for an hour in the late afternoon before heading out for some tapas for a light dinner. John had searched online and found a great place not far away. 

Tapas and sangria

Putting on our coats again we ventured out to a nearby neighbourhood and stumbled across some fabulous plazas, all chokka with people out having a drink, nibbles, socialising and generally having a good time. The open spaces here are often very generous and allow wonderful connected areas for people to gather or stroll through. Some of the tapas bars are highly decorated with ceramic tiles on their frontages and look amazing.

We were home by 7pm for a quiet evening. Our Airbnb is more rumpty than we expected. Our room is very small and the shared bathroom was a surprise. There seems to be just one other couple here, in an adjacent room. 

The front door to our accommodation looks very like a prison cell door!

26th April - Seville to Madrid

Another pretty good sleep. We are close to being converted to Central European Summer Time. We'd mostly packed up the night before so there was no rush - not that we have much at all to pack. We popped out to get a couple of pastries for the train, then decided to buy the makings to assemble a couple of bread rolls, as we were not going to arrive in Madrid until 2pm.

An easy walk down to Santa Justa Station, a bit of reading while we waited for the train, and a pleasant ride to Madrid. The countryside is best described as gently rolling, with a vast amount of agriculture from olives to crops. 

It's amazing how loud the Spanish can be. As the train left, and again when it was about to arrive, the carriage filled with the cacophony of multiple Spaniards talking over each other. It never ceases to amaze us, how in a small group there won't be just one speaker and many listeners, but instead there tend to be many speakers and one listener!

On arrival we swapped to the Metro and rode 3 stops to Tirso de Molina. Finding our room at the far end was easy, and we were soon heading back out into the city. We felt like a bit of a walk, so headed east to the huge Madrid park of El Retiro.

El Retiro is a vast acreage of wide paths, hedges, large trees, and a big (smelly) lake full of ducks, geese and carp, and the Palacio de Cristal. The latter is a beautiful cast-iron-built greenhouse. Unfortunately it must have structural issues, as it is closed at present with many wooden props strengthening the internal columns.

By now we were feeling a bit tired so found a tavern to have a quick drink. We had planned to have tapas again, but didn't find anywhere that took our fancy, and bought some food from a Dia supermarket to take back to our rooms to heat up for an easy dinner.

A couple of attractive buildings

25th April - Seville

We were up bright and early to get to the ticket office and hopefully be at or near the head of the queue for tickets for the Alcazar. We arrived at 7.45am, and found probably 40-odd people already in line. Being near the head of the queue pretty much guaranteed us tickets for the day, but the line soon included hundreds of people around three sides of the square. Perhaps half might have got a ticket before they were sold out. The ticket booth didn't open until 9am but we went armed with our e-readers and the time passed quite quickly, though it was fairly cool. 

View of the Giralda Tower in the morning sunlight as we waited in the queue

After we'd secured tickets for the 10.30am time slot we promptly zipped away to find a cafe to warm up and have a coffee. We found just the spot - a place selling hot chocolate and churros (the latter is dough pumped into hot fat). Needless to say John opted for the chocolate and churros. I went for the slightly lesser calorific option of an espresso and a warmed croissant filled with nutella! Delicious, and just what we needed.

Hot chocolate and churros, coffee and nutella croissant. 

We promptly lined up again in another queue to present our tickets and finally enter the Alcazar palace. It was well worth waiting for, and made the trip to Seville a real treat. This was the main reason we came here. The Alcazar is a Moorish royal palace, first begun in the 10th century and then elaborated on over the centuries by various rulers. 

The wow factor just kept rolling on as we wandered from room to room, passed through courtyards and strolled in the gardens. We spent a good two hours gazing at the intricate mosaics, carvings and tapestries, capturing much of it in over 200 photos! We have previously visited the Alhambra, a similar Moorish palace located in Granada, also in the south of Spain, which was similarly eye-watering. The Seville Alcazar appears to have a greater emphasis on ceramic tiling, and the Alhambra more carved plasterwork and filigree. Both are incredible.

Arriving home at 1:30pm we made ourselves bread and cheese for lunch and had a bit of a rest. Tapas was the plan for dinner and we went to a nearby tapas bar which was well-rated online. We experimented with a range of small dishes (tomato, ham and cheese salmorejo, goats cheese and jam on toast, stuffed squid, warm cod and tomato salsa, meatballs, spinach and chickpeas). It was all very tasty, and washed down well with a bottle of cava. The bar was located in a quiet neighbourhood area, with kids playing in the park next to it. All-in-all, it was a very pleasant way to wrap up a great day.

Evening tapas