Madrid by Iphone and the train to Barcelona…

We spent a couple of days looking around Madrid while the King did the business. It rained the whole time but we still enjoyed the sites. The kids even tried Spanish McDonald’s.. verdict? It’s the same.

Changing of the Guard

The Kings Palace, as in the real King of Spain 🙂

The Oldest Hotel in Madrid

Nuns go in and none come out

This building was home to  Juana De Austria, princess of Portugal  from 1536, it was transformed into a monastery in 1559. It is still in use today. When nuns take their vows they go into the building to live and never leave it’s walls for the rest of their lives.

And then a train ride

After spending 4 days in Madrid sightseeing, eating Tapas and having many siestas, we are now traveling by high speed train to Barcelona. A 3 hour trip through the country side from the middle of Spain to the coast. Our host Angeles dropped us at the train station and it was time to fend for ourselves. We have been learning words and picking things up but Jorge and Angeles were speaking for us on many occasions. Navigating the station and buying tickets for the AVE (Ally Velocidad Espana) in English was quite easy, with the ticket agent speaking English. We headed for food with 30 mins to departure. The waitress didn’t speak as much english but we were able to order dos pizza y dos espresso y fanta limon.

Waiting, we realized this was gonna be bad so we got the waitress’ attention and asked for it to go and the check. We were signing the receipt, standing up with our bags ready to roll. She brought the pizzas out wrapped in foil in a plastic bag. No cutlery and no napkins.

That’s pretty fast for a train

On the trains you have to go through X-ray so we bolted upstairs, got through security and pretty much ran for the train….Within 2 minutes of finding our seats we were off. We have a table seat, which is great, we ate our pizza like cavemen, just ripping it apart.

Every one has something to do. Miss Gremlin is playing games on the iPad, The King and Grand Master D are editing video they shot this morning.

Watching the scenery change from granite cuts, which look like some sort of mining, to crops and back to the granite cut is interest.

The train is beautiful, very modern and clean. We’re traveling at 300kmh which is approx 185mph. This same trip by road is between5-7 hours depending on how you drive and how often you stop.

There are movies and music. It’s just like a lateral airplane. Can you imagine how nice it would be to travel in America like this? Everything is so clean and new.

Next update from Barcelona..