Spain is a bit like Scotland and Ireland in that there is only so much money to restore the countless castles scattered across the landscape. So there are ruins everywhere. Most of them are down to the Moors who sailed over from Northern Africa in 711. It took them about 6 years to get to the Pyrenees and it took the Spanish over 700 years to progressively and then finally turf them out in 1492. Like that relative who comes for the weekend and stays for the summer.
But after a seven hour drive past these and many other Spanish icons like the aforementioned Osbourne Bulls and one or two olive trees we got back to Madrid on Saturday (two days ago) after two weeks circumnavigating Spain and Portugal. Four of us came back – the CB and I and two of our Kiwi mates from the tour with everyone else leaving from Barcelona. The Kiwis left today after our first serious piss-up last night, since getting here. And then there were two.
The CB and I did what we normally do when we have a few days somewhere we are unfamiliar with – we did the hop-on hop-off bus tours – two of them to different parts of Madrid. Actually it was more like a hop-on bus because no one seemed to be willing to hop-off. There was a huge queue at our stop so after a full bus went past the CB and I decided to walk back a stop and get on there. It worked.
I’m reminded of the time I was in India with a couple of colleagues. The airport at Visakhapatnam didn’t have instrument landing capability at the time and there were (and are, I suspect – I haven’t been for a while) a number of immovable hills scattered around so if the weather closed in during monsoon season, you were stuck. Not us. We chose (on a number of occasions) to catch a train for the 10 or 12 hour trip to Madras. You could never really be sure how long it would take. I think this was the only time the train from Calcutta arrived bang on time – it was exactly 24 hours late. Anyway our contacts there had driven three friends back a few stops to occupy three seats to guarantee we had them when the train came in. It worked although one of the seats did belong to the conductor until his meagre wages were supplemented.
There’s a book-worth of India stories around this and other exploits and I’ll get round to relating them in the fullness of time.
Anyway, back to Madrid. It has been well over 40 degC today – something like forty-twelve and I still don’t get how Spaniards and tourists alike can get around in this heat without a hat or sunscreen and not suffer heat stroke. Maybe that’s why we seem to have heard more ambulance sirens here than just about anywhere else we’ve been.
Off to Toledo tomorrow. If anything happens that you need to know, you’ll read it here first.