Paracuellos de Jarama, Spain and Canary Islands

We arrived in Madrid by Friday night and checked into Hostel Odesa. We were happy it was so easy to find. Our bus left us off in the outskirts of Madrid, so we had to come in by metro. The metro seemed a little confusing, but then a young man noticed our struggle, and gave us his metro map which made all the difference. The metro stop was next to the street where our hostel was. The hostel owners were very friendly, and arranged our airport shuttle for us, as well as giving us maps with careful instructions for getting around Madrid. We had three full days in Madrid. On our first day, Norm devised a walking tour and we went from plaza to plaza seeing all the historical sights, parks, cathedrals, and market places. On our second day, we spent the whole day at the Musee de Prado. It’s a museum on scale with the Louvre or National Museum in London. We saw some amazing artworks, but my favorite was The Garden of Delights by Bosch. On our last day, we went shopping and bought gifts for family and friends. It was truly a challenge to find made in Spain products. Most tourist shops are filled with junk made in China or India. We did visit a ceramics shop where I found a rabbit plate that I liked. It was a Rennaisance design in yellow and blue. We also found a tile sun dial. Norm found several other pieces that he bought as gifts because he doesn’t mind carrying a lot of ceramics. The owner of the shop filled us in on the history of each piece we bought. The shop had been in his family for several generations. We also located a gift shop where I bought some leather bags and jewelry. My last mission that night was to locate some more hand painted fans. These I found in the shopping area near our hotel. We visited one last museum, Reina Sofia, where we saw Picasso’s Guernaca. I enjoyed an audio visual montage on the history of Spain that was called Canciones despues de La Guerra. It was a collection of newsreels and videos put together creatively to show human emotions and reactions to the effects of war. Norm snoozed through it. We cut our visit short because we both had museum fatigue. Is that a real condition? We rested, then packed, and enjoyed our last dinner in Spain. We went to bed early but struggled to actually sleep. We had our alarms set for 1:30 am so we could make our 6 am flight.