His Master's Voice

We normally come to Madrid on the 6.20am AVE (high speed train) and love the journey. We can walk to the station in Barcelona, the train's very spacious and comfortable, no security hassles or waiting and straight into the centre on Madrid in less than 3 hours. However, it's not cheap and on our new euro controlled diet we'd decided to fly wth Vueling. We'd planned to try out a newly opened metro line to the airport but discovered late last night that it was going to be too tight time-wise and thus stressful as we hadn't accounted for a 45 min journey. So we were up before 5am this morning to get a taxi to the airport for our 7am flight. Arrived in Madrid and took the metro straight to the Egyptian Embassy to hand in our papers for our visas. By 10.30 we were sitting having cafe con leche and churros in a little traditional cafe, stifling our yawns. By then I was also sneezing my head off and realized it was probably caused by my allergy to dust and it was coming off my little-worn anorak. Given that I've also had very runny eyes for the last week, I was suffering a bit and so I was thinking I might 'have to' buy a new jacket. Bb had other ideas though. Then to our usual hotel (Spanish 'hostal' really), checked in and walked out into bright Madrileño sunshine and round the corner to put my anorak into the dry cleaners for a rush job clean - ready by 6pm. My blip was taken near the Royal Palace, about a 20 minute walk away. A beautiful day, but very chilly out of the sun.