……..was such a treat after my nightmare! It was so well laid out and one of the first things we did, after coffee, was to take the hop on/hop off bus tour to give us a sense of the city. We spent about 2 1/2 hours, with a short coffee break, discovering this beautiful part of the city and it’s history. Madrid today has a population of 3 1/2 million and is the capital of Spain but like the rest of the country it has quite the history which if you are interested, you must google, as this little blog would turn into a boring book if I tried to repeat it here. We really just explored old Madrid not only by the tourist bus but also on foot and were very pleasantly surprised that it was not as easy to get lost here as in some of the smaller walled cities which, of course, are not nearly as well laid out. The weather was good which made the walking great and so we toured for two days. One of the main stops for a few hours during which we got a little overwhelmed was Museo del Prado. This museum contains the world’s greatest assembly of Spanish paintings from the 12th to the 19th centuries, including works from Velazquez and Goya. There’s way too much to tell you about Museum del Prado except that we came away, I think, with a greater appreciation of Spain’s history through its artists. The Prado has collections not only from Spain but also from Flemish, Dutch and Italian, French and German painters. There’s so much to do in Madrid and we barely scraped the surface; this is definitely a city that’s worth coming back to.