Madrid

I won't go on too much except to say we had a bag stolen from the Valencia train station before our trip to Madrid. Two passports, a laptop, ipod and a few bank cards and miscellaneous items were taken which put a huger dampner on the 4 hour train ride. Furious, we managed to find our way to our respective embassies in 40C heat to find we had to wait to Monday, and pay excessive costs and book another night and new flights etc. Not happy but thankful for travel insurance.

Despite our mood, Madrid was not all that great. The heat made it unbearable to be wandering around so we used our time to visit a large, albeit empty, mall with air conditioning! and the zoo which was quite a fun day. We also stopped by a lake in the middle of their biggest greenspace to read our books in the shade for the afternoon and wandered through the city centre and the infamous department store, El Corte Ingles.

Quite relieved to be heading back to London for awhile although the travel bug will return!

Madrid, for us, was the Seventh Level of Hell.

Pardon me for being a bit sour, but having our passports stolen was a huge inconvenience and a terrible end to our trip.

Madrid is hot (40degrees!), crowded and polluted, and it’s barren, desert landscape isn’t particularly picturesque. We did, however, stay in a nice hotel with air conditioning – not a terrible place to be forced to stay another night.

I'll keep this short and sweet/sour because the less said about Madrid the better.

Maybe 10 Madrid pics are here