Short night, day bright? At least we leave when the rain comes and we have perfect travel conditions to Madrid!
The ride to Madrid Atocha at up to 302km/h is crazy fast and at the same time: smooth. The landscapes are rewarding and show a variety of hills, different geological cross sections as you perceive how they cut through everything to enable the rails here. A great journey experience, just the local understanding of Silencio is not very strict, so sleeping is not really possible without proper “equipment”.
Our plans for Madrid are easy, relax and see. We originally decide to make a Segway Tour and see IKONO on day one, for tomorrow the Zoo and Aquarium are on our fixed schedule. But our first stop is PLENTY, our breakfast stop. Not far from central Station just behind a few jardins, several nice breakfast spots are close by, we pick some very tasty and enjoyable toasted sourdough breads and are anxious for the Madrid experience which we will try to cover with a bird day pass to recover from yesterday’s steps a bit.
To avoid another 30.000 steps we decide to take a day’s pass for Bird (e-scooter) and curve through Madrid center from trainstation to “Real Palace” and back to the envigorating Retiro park. The later is probably my favorite place in all Madrid. Why? A glass palace in front of water sceneries, an in-city – park waterboat place or just the rose garden we graced from a far or the multitude of small architectural highlights everywhere. Simply a great place to enjoy.
I admit, I like musicals and when Juli suggested to see ‘El Rey léon’ it did not take long to check for some spare tickets and book them. Well, it was well spent. The sheer setting in the theatre was incredible, layers of jungle moving on artists’ heads and costumes that moved lion heads in front of the actors for Mufasa and Scar, not to mention many more details that brought the setting firmly to live. You enjoy it “even” when you do hardly understand a spoken or sung word. Definitely worth the experience.
And while we have neither done a “Segway tour” nor seen “Ikono”, the city is promising enough to come for another weekend in the future – then we’ll do Ikono – and maybe have a Segway tour, or enjoy more with a day-pass on the e-scooters here.
