Spain: Madrid

So, we've uploaded most of the photos to Flickr. I'll be introducing a city a day--and today's Madrid--but you can peek ahead :)

We spent the first two nights in Madrid, where we stayed at Hotel Victoria 4. Our room was a very nice, top-floor room, which like many top floors hotel rooms was quite roomy but had slanted attic-like ceilings and the "marriage" bed was two twins pushed together. But for all that it was clean, quiet and had a huge bathroom with lots of hot water. It was just a couple of blocks off Plaza del La Puerta Del Sol. Because of the rain, our stay was museum heavy--the Prado for classic Spanish art and Reina Sofia (first photo below) for modern art. We did manage to snag an end-of-the-day tour of the church of San Francisco el Grande, snuck an outside peek at Palacio Royal (second photo below), plus did a ton of walking around old Madrid and Bourbon Madrid. We also caught El Retiro Park during a dry part of the day and did a tapas tour of Calle Cava Baja, stopping at Casa Lucas, Txakoli and a few more nearby.

We spent our last night of the whole trip in Madrid, as well, when we stayed at Roommate Laura, which was fabulous and only missing a hotel bar. That was actually one of  the hidden learnings of the trip. So often I wanted a hotel bar and none of the hotels we stayed at had one.