Just a moment in Madrid, Spain

While in Granada we discussed with our friends our plans to take the train to Madrid on Saturday.  We were flying out mid-day on Sunday and wanted to avoid any last minute transportation issues.  After all, we did have to be back at work on Monday.

Everyone thought we were nuts!  They kept asking us why we were taking the train and not the bus.  Well, in our experience buses were not nearly as comfortable as trains, took a whole lot longer, and in some places you could be accompanied by all kinds of other passengers like goats and chickens that you would not want to spend hours on a bus with.  The chuckles of laughter were enough to get us to check it out.

The intercity bus system in Spain is very, very good.  The buses are very modern and equipped with restrooms on board.  They are clean and very efficient and cost a fraction of what the train does.  So we looked at the schedules, much to our surprise the bus to Madrid only took 30 minutes longer than the train and we would not have to deal with the overwhelming size and confusion of the Atocha train station.  The additional trip time is spent at a very modern travel stop where everyone gets off the bus to stretch, go to the bathroom and get something to eat or drink.  These stops are typically well equipped and might also have a book store, tourism office, cafeteria and grocery store.

Many of the buses in Spain are equipped with WiFi and some are even set up as luxury executive transportation with large seats, plugs for all your electronics; and food and drinks included in the ticket.  Even these special buses, which are double the price of a normal bus, are a fraction of the price of train tickets.  There are routes in Spain where the train is a better option because the roads are so difficult and the buses take a lot longer.  In these cases the train is worth the money.  To travel from Granada to Madrid the train was 80 euros per person and the bus was 17.  No contest!

We arrived in Madrid early afternoon and checked into our hotel, a charming small hotel just a 15 minute walk to the Prado and very near both the bus station and Atocha.  Taking a walk, we did what every self-respecting tourist should do in a new city; we found a café and sat down outside to have a bite to eat and a beer. 

Madrid is a big city, over 4 million people live there and the noise and traffic confirm it.  We knew we did not have a prayer of a chance of getting to know Madrid in one night so we decided to limit ourselves to just one thing on the agenda, the Prado museum.  We were there on a Saturday and much to our delight we discovered that the Prado opens its regular exhibits to the public on Saturday and Monday evenings for free from 6pm until they close.  The days of the week and times may change from season to season but they do this so that the residents can go and enjoy the Museum without all the groups of tourists that fill it up during the daytime hours.

The Prado is far too large and has way too many exhibits to be seen in an evening (or a week for that matter) so we picked just two artists and tried to see everything that was on display by Velazquez and Goya; after all we were in Spain.  We did manage to see most of the collections by these two wonderful Spanish artists in the three hours we were there but the closing bell rang much too soon; hours in the Prado fly by like minutes.

We had a late dinner in the hotel restaurant and slept soundly on our last night in Spain.  In the morning we had our coffee in the hotel and checked out the metro and buses schedules to the airport, we decided to relax for the morning and just take a cab.  We knew the travel back to the states would be grueling and we could not have been more right.

Flying out of Madrid was very interesting.  Additional security measures were being implemented on all flights to the US due to an elevated terrorism threat level at the time, we still don’t know why.  These security measures cause major operational problems for many airports.  The Spanish way of implementing “additional security measures” was to put all the planes that were leaving Madrid to go to the US at the very far end of one terminal and restrict access to this area by installing additional security procedures.  Once you passed through this additional security and went down to the gate area you were absolutely not allowed to leave for any reason.  There were no restaurants or shops located at this end of the terminal though water bottles were available from a vending machine, and of course, our flight was delayed by an hour.  Poor Mike, the smoking area was 20 yards outside the secure perimeter!

We were flying a US carrier that we have flown many times and never liked.  We had an eight hour flight across the water, a four hour lay-over in Philadelphia and then a five hour flight home to Phoenix.  Well, in Madrid, our flight was delayed another hour, and then another…..by the time our flight left we were exactly four hours behind schedule.  Once we got settled in our seats and got off the ground the announcement was made that one of the restrooms was not working, really….four extra hours on the ground in Madrid and they could not find a plumber?

The pilots managed to make up about 40 minutes time in flight, probably not long enough to make our connection but long enough to let us hope.  In the Philadelphia airport we found much to our delight that Spain had gone through their seasonal daylight savings time adjustment, which had not been reflected in the aircrafts schedule, and we actually had arrived in time to make our flight to Phoenix!  Clearing customs and immigration in Philadelphia we were surprised and slightly chagrined to discover that the US was now stamping an entry stamp into the passports of its own citizens.  We wonder if we’ll need an exit stamp as well.  Needless to say by the time we arrived in Phoenix we were very happy to be done with the “travel” part of traveling.