Madrid Day 1

It’s time for our annual anniversary trip! Headed to Spain for tapas and….more tapas.

But first, some sushi. Flight isn’t until 6:10pm so we dropped off the kids at school and had the rest of the day to pack and chill.

This will do just fine to start off our anniversary celebration.

Calling Uber. Was going to drive to airport and park our beater Jeep there, but a recent stuck brake caliper nixed that idea. I think it’s probably cheaper to Uber both ways than to park at the airport for a week anyway.

Blah, Tesla Model 3 Uber.

We got to the airport early, was antsy waiting at home, so might as well wait here. Our flight has been delayed by about 40min, which wouldn’t be a big deal if we didn’t have a connecting flight to catch in London. With a total layover time of about 2 hours in London, it may be a close call on whether we can catch our connecting flight or not. We shall see.

Some coffee, of course.

Haven’t had Hut’s burger in probably 10 years. Used to go to their location downtown regularly for two for one burgers on Wednesday. Those were the days.

Good to see that they still have my go-to, The All American Buddy Holly Burger.

Let’s eat! Tastes just like what I remembered. Hit the spot.

And now we drink and wait.

An add on shot for half price, I guess I’ll do that.

Economy class seats, this will be a brutal flight. I think it’s about 10hours to London. Flight is still 40min late, eeeek!

Free alcohol, time for a screw driver.

RL was quite proud of her nails.

I love airplane food…but this meal was just ok.

Wood spork.

After hours of poor sleep we were served this sorry looking pretzel bun sandwich for breakfast. Can’t say British Airways serves good food.

Arrived in London, by the time we disembarked the plane, we’ve got only one hour to catch our connection.

Go go go go go!!!

Shit, we need to wait for a bus to transfer to another terminal. When I had looked up the information at home on terminal transfers, the airport had listed three options, train, subway, and bus. Bus being the slowest, so I was going to take the subway. However, I couldn’t find any way that got us all the way there using the subway, so it either doesn’t exist anymore or isn’t running right now.

Come on bus, let’s go! It’ll take 10 min just to get to the other terminal by bus.

Reached the other terminal, and fucking shit, we need to go through passport check and security again.

Line doesn’t seem long, but it took forever. I had forgotten how here they force you to put all liquids in a small 20x20cm plastic bag that they hand you. Everything has to fit with it zipped up or else you need to start throwing things away. Everywhere people were taking forever and throwing away liquids, so this semi short line actually took forever. It took forever for us too since we had packed too much liquids and had to try to get everything to fit into the little plastic bag(one per person) and throw the rest away. Ugh.

Then finally when we got through this security, we had less than 20min before our flight took off. I looked at the departure board and saw that it “flight closing” for boarding status. Fuck!! We ran with our heavy bags, the gate was way on the other side of the terminal. My cardio sucks, I was huffing and puffing.

Yes!!! Made the flight!!! We ran the whole way and barely made it.

RL and I were absolutely out of breathe as we tried to catch our flight. I’ve never had to run to catch a flight before, so for once we were those people running through the airport. What a mess on having a delayed flight. Too close for comfort.

Let’s go to Madrid now.

Exhausted and sleep deprived from earlier flight.

Just a random airplane tail sticking out of a building.

Oh look, a Concorde. It’s a tiny airplane in person.

Bye England, only here for 1 hour this time.

ZZZZzzzzz.

Getting close. It’s been a tough traveling trip. We hit much turbulence on the leg into London and also this leg into Madrid. It was bad enough that several times I thought about grabbing the throw up bag.

Made it to Spain!

Madrid has a really fancy, expensive airport.

Of course, had to take a terminal train just to be able to exit the airport.

There’s subway and train into city center, but then we would need to transfer in order to get to our hotel. I’m too old for that shit now, Uber it is.

Except I’m sure the taxi lobby doesn’t want people to take Uber, because when we actually exited the airport, the Uber pick up area was no where to be found and had no signage. What did have amazing signage was the taxi stand. Long line, but it moved swiftly. 30 Euros in taxi gets me into anywhere in city center, cheaper than Uber. Sounds good.

Covid screen.

Arid.

Lots of graffiti everywhere.

Getting close. It’s about 30mins ride into the city center from airport.

Oh look, coffee and TGI Fridays!

Arrived!! So glad we made our connecting flight. Would have sucked if we had missed it and had to spend a night in London.

Our room, this is what $240 a night gets you in very good location in central Madrid right across the street from Four Seasons hotel. I think the rate at four seasons was like over 800 a night or something crazy like that.

This ain’t the Four Seasons, that’s for sure. Our view from our window looks into a light shaft. But it’ll be nice and quiet so we’re not annoyed about it.

They have a bidet, sweet.

Checked in hotel, time to get water and snacks. Also need to get Afrin at a pharmacy that I threw away at the stupid airport security check since it wouldn’t fit in that tiny plastic bag. I’m currently dealing with some sinus issues and feeling a little under the weather.

You ask for the med from the person working here, and someone else in the basement sends the meds up a little dumbwaiter. Ha.

Some snacks and water for the hotel room.

Time to hit the town and get some tapas and drink. We are tired, but due to jetlag, we are not sleepy. It’s about 5pm here which puts us at around 10am back in Austin.

The Four Seasons, right across from our hotel. And of course, Hermes is in the same building.

Within about a 5 min walk, we are in old town with lots and lots of tapas bars.

This shall be our first tapas spot.

They had one server in this place and the whole time he was whistling along to The Beatles music that was playing. Not just any whistling though, he sounded just like a bird. It was amazing.

All of a sudden, all these police cars showed up. Wonder what’s going on.

RL asked why all the police here are all fit and hot compared to the cops in America. We never did figure out why all the cops came, but it didn’t seem to be any real serious issue anyhow as they mostly all stood around and joked.

Yes!!!! Well, the tomato with the garlic had literally large pieces of raw garlic, quite overpowering.

I believe in a traditional tapas bar, you just throw the trash on the floor.

These streets reminds me much of Rome.

RL doing her “art” pose.

Everything happens here so late in Spain. Half of the tapas bars are still closed, and many don’t open until 7pm.

Next spot.

Let’s eat!! Yum, drinks and tapas, hard to beat.

OK, now the lack of sleep is finally catching up to us. Time to go back to our hotel for a nap and then come out later tonight for a second push on the tapas scene.

Puerta del Sol. Supposed to be one of the main plazas here, but it’s currently under construction.

Art pose again.

3 hours of napping later, it’s now 10:30pm and time to head out again for more food and drinks.

RL walked by and said that it looks like an American diner from the 50s, then we saw the sign. She’s right.

Apple store.

Puerta del Sol.

All food places are now open.

What’s up with these themed American diners?

This reminds me a little bit of Istanbul at night.

Our girls would love this.

Found it. RL had found this sherry bar during her trip research, and wanted to come here to drink sherry. Hemingway apparently spent time here back in the day.

This place was super old school, seems to be all locals. They had no photos signed posted….why? I hate this whole no photos BS. Of course, I still snuck in some photos.

Really cool old interior.

They make their own sherry here and they pour it out from these wooden barrels with sprouts on them.

Now drunk, so RL was more brazen with the camera. Took this picture to remember that they would pour sherry into these dark glass bottles and it was like a sherry pitcher that you kept at the table and used to top off your own drinks.