Blogs from District of Madrid, Spain, Europe - page 10

Madrid Day #9 We're all checked in for our flight in the morning to Dallas with a 4 hour lay-over and then Portland. We have a reasonable departure time of 11:15 AM and a driver to take us to the Airport. That will be the end of this wonderful trip that started in Barcelona on March 2nd. We've visited seven different cities in Spain (Vilanova, Valencia, Sitges, Roses, Granada, Jerez and Madrid) and three different cities in Portugal (Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra) and the Douro Valley. That's a lot of different beds and a lot of packing and unpacking, but by the end we've got it down to a science and can clear a hotel room in under an hour. Last evening we went back to a bar we had been to last week called Lateral and ... read more

Thursday was the last of our private tours in and around Madrid. This tour included a a car, a giant black Mercedes 9 passenger van, a driver and a tour guide, They picked us up at our hotel / apt and we drove South and West to the small royal town of Aranjuez. This town is in the Tagas River valley, the river that flows all the way to Lisbon. The town was dominated by the Royal residence that was build in the 18th and 19th centuries and used primarily in the springtime. The Castle was well preserved with period furnishings and artwork. The painting and frescos were quite fantastic. One room was totally covered in porcelain as if it were wallpaper. The grounds were quite beautiful as well. And lunch we had included a private ... read more

We were up at 5:00 AM for a ride down the mountain and the Douro River to the Porto Airport so we could catch at 9:30 AM flight to Madrid. Louis, our driver was worried about being late, because on the way to pick us up he encountered a rockslide the closed the river road, and he had to take a significant detour to get past it. It was Pouring Rain when we left Quinta Nova and there was water gushing off the hills. We saw 4 or 5 more landslides on the way down to the river. We were able to get by them all but it made a bit of a scary ride. The Porto Airport was a breeze and the airplane was fairly full but had lots of seat room. The flight from ... read more

10 days in a carry on - I've done it before and I'll do it again! I'm off to sunny Spain to see the boy. Nonstop Dallas to Madrid on a 787 filled with extra oxygen, shadeless windows and hopefully, less jet lag. And hooray! No one in the seat next to me! Note to self - Row 25 or so, the last one in the first economy cabin by the lavatory shows only 2 seats instead of 3, probably to give a little extra aisle room near the lavatory. I took the window thinking no one would purposefully book that horrible aisle seat - and no one did! The entire row (1 extra seat yippee!) to myself. Good gamble on my part. Glass of wine, 1/2 Ambien, and 10 hours later I'm waking up in ... read more

Hi Everyone, I'm going to make this quick because yesterday was just a day of travel. We left So Cal about an hour late and started our 13-hour flight to Moscow. The flight from Moscow was also late so we got into Madrid at 1:30am and to our apartment until about 3am. We actually had some pretty fun stories but everyone is almost dressed to go out for the day and I still need to brush my hair/teeth and put on my face. I'll update this tonight and fill in the blanks. Love you all, Angela, Allison and the kids... read more