May 10, 2016 Lisbon Day 2 I am writing this entry a day late and doing so on purpose. If I had written it at the end of the day, which is my routine, it would have been very negative and that is not the impression I want to leave the readers with. More importantly, when I am 95 and looking back at these blogs because I forgot I ever took the trip, I don’t want to read negative things about my past travels. A few words on why it was better to blog about yesterday, today. First, we woke up very late, yes we were tired, but normally we just push through as there is so much to do. This is especially true when it is a country and city we have never ... read more

May 7, 2016 Much needed rest On every trip there is that day that you just need to rest. Today was our day. We have been going pretty much non-stop since we got off the plane and it finally caught up to us. So, this morning we opted out of breakfast and opted in to sleep. In fact, we didn’t get out of bed until 11:30. This did require a bit of rearranging with the schedule, but we managed to do everything we wanted. With our much needed extra sleep, we were off to our first stop, lunch in Chueca, which also is the center of gay night life, they had a bar for everyone and I mean everyone. Chueca is also a somewhat trendy shopping area. Lunch The initial plan was ... read more

The First Full Day May 5. We both slept very well last night, the bed is very firm, and add 2 days with no real sleep we were out like lights and slept straight to the 7:00 am alarm. We did not actually get up at 7 but allowed a little late sleeping before we started our first full day of Madrid. Breakfast is included with our room, but we nearly missed it only caught the last 30 minutes, which meant all of the hot items were gone. There was still plenty of good Spanish hams, cheeses, bread, pastries and fruits. The coffee was strong one of those Nespresso machines. Royal Palace and Cathedral Our day started with a tour of the Palacio Real, the Spanish version of Versailles, however, it doesn’t really compare ... read more

New Year’s Day We woke up at around 11 and it was snowing hard again. We had no plans other than the hotel brunch at 1:30. Breakfast was included with our stay, but today we upgraded so we could participate in the New Year’s Day Brunch. It was quite the spread. I only took one picture and that was of the dessert and pastry bar. There was a very large selection ranging from vegetable gratin, to lamb tagine. There was also some nice poached salmon, risotto, gnocchi, cheeses, fruits and so much more. We pretty much stuffed ourselves. Then we went back to the room and watched movies on TV for the rest of the day and watched the snow. We were going to have poutine at a place near mount royale, but we were just ... read more

Jerry slept in a bit so I went down to breakfast by myself, while he finished getting ready. It has been snowing on and off today, which didn’t matter because we were only above ground for maybe a total of 15 minutes today. Spent most of our time in the museum, metro or underground. The only thing we did today was go to the Museum de Beaux Arts. It was an easy metro ride, but we really could have used the underground and walked there, hindsight is 20/20. The museum was in three separate building all connected by underground passages. The first section had a special exhibit that we did not see. We did get a pleasant surprise as there was no entry fee, for whatever reason all regular exhibits were free admission. The rest of ... read more