Year Abroad: Highlights of the week: 31st March to 6th April

       This week’s “highlights” is the short version of the following posts.  Just my favourite parts of each day.

Saturday 31^st – Off to Madrid.  Spent ages wandering around.  Went to the Botanic Gardens.  Visited the Reina Sofia to see Guernica. 

Sunday 1^st – Sat in La Puerta del Sol eating a pastry in the morning sun.  Visited an Ancient Egyptian Temple.  Sat outside the palace for a while people watching.  Saw a little lost boy get reunited with his daddy.  Visited the Naval Museum.  Chilled out with ice cream in the Retiro park.  Went to the airport to collect the mother (although technically that was Monday morning).

Monday 2^nd – Off to Toledo for the day.  Visited the Military museum in the Alcazar.  Took the tourist train which told lots of weird stories about Toledo.  My favourite was the vengeful father who after the King raped his daughter and refused to marry her, opened the gates and let in the marauding Moors…as you do.  Back to Madrid. 

Tuesday 3^rd – Got out of the disgusting hostal.  Headed to Salamanca.  The hostal there was lovely.  The owner spent ages telling us in detail how to find our way around the city, what each of the monuments were and where we should eat.  Walked around the city.  Took the tourist train to see everything.  Lovely menu del dia.  And we saw Andy Parsons from Mock the Week in the street.

Wednesday 4^th – Wandered some more around Salamanca.  Then we headed back to Madrid.  We had a good dinner and then were lucky enough to catch a procession in the Puerta del Sol before the rain came on again.  Headed to the hostal to sleep.

Thursday 5^th – Went to the NASA exhibition.  Spent like four hours there.  Then we went to the Palacio Real which was pretty impressive.  We used our new guidebook, which someone helpfully left on the tourist train in Toledo, to give us more info.  Nice dinner in a random bar somewhere off of the Puerta del Sol.

Friday 6^th – Not much to be done.  We checked out and lugged the suitcases down the four flights of stairs.  Then headed to the bus station and spent the time on the bus watching The Big Bang Theory and Britain’s Got Talent.  When we got back to Baeza we were in time to see one of the processions.  My band’s procession was cancelled due to the torrential rain…whoever said Spain was a warm, sunny country was sadly mistaken this past month.