Madrid; Saturday, 12 November, 2022

I had a nice long lie in and then a big breakfast before heading out of the hotel and into town.

My first stop of the morning was to head over to the National Library which is also home to the National Archaeological Museum. I spent quote a bit of time wandering around the museum which is very expansive, though at the time of visiting the upper galleries were temporarily closed so the history of Spain appeared to end with Moorish control of the peninsular.

From the museum I had a bit of a wander around the local area which includes an impressively large and concrete monument to the discovery of America close to the Columbus Column. Also nearby is a rundown and dilapidated square with an abandoned and decaying bank, called the Plaza Margaret Thatcher. Not certain if the square was named after her following it’s decay or if it’s just the natural course the square took after being named for her.

From the Colon area it was a short bus ride down the main road to the Prado Museum. This is the premier art gallery in Spain and houses some of the countries most important works of art. It also turns out to be incredibly popular even on a damp Saturday in November with the queue for tickets well over 45 minutes long and looking online wasn’t any better with the next available slot not being for another near 2 hours, so I abandoned looking round there and instead wandered the short distance down to Atocha station.

The original station building is an impressive single span arch roof enclosing a massive space that no longer sees any trains, following the rebuilding of the station as part of the high-speed network being built the original train shed has been turned into a botanical gardens with large trees and ferns adapting very well to the environment.

I also took advantage of the number of cafes here to grab a quick bite to eat before catching the train up to Sol in the centre of the city. That turned out not to be a good idea as the whole area is currently being pedestrianised, but all the pavements were in the process of being re-laid so there were only narrow path ways around the edge of the square and a large number of people, so instead I walked on a little further to the Plaza Mayor – the main square of the city and stopped there for a drink in one of the many cafes that line the square.

After spending a decent while people watching I walked on down from the Plaza Mayor to the Temple de Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple that was rescued from the bed of the River Nile in the 1950s and rebuilt in Madrid brick by brick. I had intended on looking around inside, but once again there was a very long queue which would have meant at least a 30 minutes wait if not longer as only 10 people at a time are currently allowed inside the temple to comply with Covid regulations.

Just behind the temple is a view point over the lower part of the city and along the ridge to the Royal Palace and Cathedral that I spent a bit of time at instead taking in the views, before walking the 800m or so further along the ridge to the cable car station with the intention of taking the Teleférico. However on arrival at the station I discovered that the service had been suspended due to forecast weather, and to be fair the sky did look a little dark.

I was going to wander back up to the metro, but the sky was staring to darken very quickly and the wind was picking up fast hinting that a storm was blowing in, so I instead headed for a nearby bus stop to catch the bus to the nearest metro station, which proved to be a good call as a massive thunder storm rolled in across the city.

I caught the metro back to the hotel and freshened up before grabbing some dinner in the hotel whilst the storm continued to rage overhead and decided that heading back out into town probably wasn’t going to happen this evening, so instead turned in for an early night.