Madrid; Friday, 09 June, 2006

After leaving beautiful sunny skies at work at lunchtime and zipping down to Gatwick, I arrived in Madrid 25 minutes late, because of a damaged wheel on the plane, into a massive thunderstorm with torrential rain. After having negotiated my way through the airport, which took almost an hour, I picked up the metro towards the city centre. My hotel was conveniently located about 10 minutes walk from the metro station at the end of the line from the airport. Unfortunately, 5 days earlier they had closed part of the line to build a new station, so I had to change twice and cart my luggage up and down several flights of stairs.

By the time I had checked into the hotel and was settled in it was almost 9:30 (nearly 3 hours since I had landed!) Just as I was about to head out into the city centre (Madrid is an evening place, dinner starts at 10pm) the next torrential downpour started with yet more thunder, so I held out for a bit longer.

With the weather stable, for a short while, I walked to the metro and caught the train down to Opera. I had a short wander around some of the streets before ending up at the Royal Palace, gardens and the Cathedral.

Having spent some time taking photos, and with it rapidly approaching Midnight, and another massive thunderstorm approaching from the mountains (the lightning was already streaking across the sky) I hopped back onto the Metro and back to the hotel, getting back just a couple of minutes before another spectacular cloud burst!