September / October, 2015
Yes, we are back on the road again to head to another tour of Spain with Frank Camorra of Movida fame. This time we are with another tour company, MPT Tours.
http://www.mptworldwidejourneys.com.au
The following is our itinerary for the tour, looks great doesn’t it:
We start out from MEL with a late Friday evening flight on Air Qatar. The flight leaves over an hour late, which is a concern as we have a tightish connection in Doha, but at least I got to watch my team make it to the Grand Final. A minor brickbat at the QF lounge – after a huge positive I wrote about the Singapore QF lounge, the catering here at MEL was nowhere near the same standard.
The Pilot makes up a bit of time once we get away but it is still over 13 hours before we arrive in Doha. The airport is completely different from when we transited through here a couple of years ago, a sleek and modern airport albeit long walks from anywhere to anywhere. After going through security screening we have time to go to the Business Class lounge. It is huge with just about every seat in use. We find a spot and get ourselves some drinks – there was waiter service and we could have got some food but had enough of a relatively stodgy breakfast so did not want any.
Onto another plane, after a decent walk again. It is a “short flight” nearly 7 hours to Madrid, pleasant enough. At MAD, there is a bit of walking to do but nothing like Doha. We have a quick pass through Immigration and then down to baggage. There is some delay before the bags start coming off but when they do ours are among the first to arrive. Outside to a taxi rank, there are squillions of taxis there and a nil queue so off we go into central Madrid. We do so well in time terms that when we get to our Airbnb apartment the owner was not there yet, expecting us to be quite a bit longer. Not an issue, after calling him he shows up soon after and lets us in. It is a small studio but clean with new fittings and serves our purpose well for a one night stand. Carmello was a really nice guy and made recommendations of places to eat and had an array of maps.
I have a nap while JV prances around as per usual. After her return, we head out around 7:30 initially to a restaurant recommended by Carmello. People in the elevator as we went up said we had made a great choice but when we entered they were in clean-up mode. Service did not start until 9:00 PM which I suppose is typical of much of Europe but not really in our timeframes. We wander around the streets for a while, eventually selecting this casual place that had one redeeming feature – see below – as well as being open. The menu had some Tapas dishes but was probably more international in flavour as were the two dishes we ordered.
The food was good albeit the restaurant had a couple of annoyances – (1) a “sealed” butter container was half full, clearly had been used before and resealed; (2) There was a young Mother and her son at a nearby table who had one of the shrillest and loudest voices of all time who virtually never shut up. Things improved when they left.
We walked back to the flat noticing that all the outdoor bars were filled with people. We wanted to stop for a drink but none were available. So we went back to the flat. There was a fair bit of people noise, I guess it was still early by local standards, but I was tired enough to crash out.