Madrid

After the 4 hour bus ride we arrived in the mid afternoon and were taken to a jamon museum. Essentially, it was a busy bar with an over supply of ham, there were so many legs of ham hanging off the ceiling and walls (5 deep in some cases) that it was impossible to try to count how many there were.

We struggled to order food, but Delia (our tour guide) came to the rescue yelling our order to the barmen in Spanish. Our orders were promptly delivered. We are still not sure if the quick service was due to Delia's assertiveness, or the fact she is an extremely attractive ex-bikini model - either way we win! The jamon museum had really, really cheap food, 200ml of beer is only 40 cents and breakfast consisting of croissant, orange juice and coffee was 2.40 euro.

We were then given a quick walking tour of Madrid after which we made our way to a laundromat to do our washing. nothing gets Mick happier than clean underpants and clean shirts (especially after traveling for a while).

Dinner was with Maureen and Robbie at a tapas restaurant based off a recommendation from Mick's boss. After getting lost trying to find it, we were slightly unimpressed with the food. For this to be a recommendation (out of all restaurants in Madrid) we were expecting amazing things. One of the things Mick is quickly learning is that his tastes are very different to his co-workers. Mick has some Barcelona recommendations from his other boss, which he will probably now ignore.

The best part of the night was the company and the post dinner drinks, Robbie and Maureen opted for the safe option of beer, while we had the bizarre sangria concoction which seemed to consist off random white spirit (possibly Cointreau), random dark spirit (possibly port or sherry) followed by a splash of red wine and then lemonade - strong but very sweet.

Our second day in Madrid started off at the Prado art gallery. There was an amazing exhibition on Greco (an artist Mick had never heard of before); in this exhibition they had original Greco pieces hung next to other pieces that were inspired by the original (e.g. Picasso had done some work inspired Greco, so they would have both the Greco and Picasso next to each other). We also saw Chagall and many other artists alongside the radical painter from Toledo. Also in the Prado are hundreds and thousands of religious paintings. We still remember all the "Madonna and child" paintings from our Italy trip, so we zipped through the rest of the gallery, taking time to see the Bosch, Velazquez and Goya exhibits.

We then spent the rest of the day wandering Madrid's gardens and streets before meeting up for a Group dinner/feast of grilled meats and vegetables is a cellar dining room.