Off we go! Best Lyft ride to the airport yet, sign of good days ahead. Good food in Boston’s Logan Airport International Terminal too where we met the daughter of a former Red’s pitcher, Jim O’Toole.

After a sleepless night on the plane we find our way into the city by train and Metro and wander out into a lovely plaza. Only problem is that we failed to connect to airport WiFi and install our eSIMs so we are without internet and making our way with a paper map-so old school. We quickly regroup with the help of a lovely Taberna (with WiFi) and delicious food. A short nap at the apartment and we are soon quickly reminded of one of our favorite things about Spain- the food of course.

The streets of old town Madrid are a maze of angled routes that sometimes end in stairwells or open onto unexpected plazas. We made our way to a square that marked the oldest structure in Madrid and then on to the relatively new, but grand Cathedral de Santa Maria. The nearby Royal Palace is an enormous collection of overly opulent rooms that drip with silk, gilding, tapestries and frescoes. Too much to take in. We finished with a visit to an Egyptian temple donated to Madrid when its site was to be flooded by the Aswan Dam. Quite the odd collection of sites but all good. (Maybe not as good as dinner and drinks though.)

The Prado may not be among the largest museums in the world but its collection surely ranks near the top. There are rooms full of immense astonishing art from Spanish painters across centuries. Beautiful and exhausting but we head from there back toward the Gran Via where the architecture competes for attention even more than the Prado’s art or high-end retail. We finish our day with yet more good food and drink. What is not to love about Madrid.(Google translate still needs work)