Y Viva España!

"This year I'm off to sunny Spain..."

For the last few years we have been visiting Italy, which we have very much enjoyed, and thought it was about time we had a look at Spain, which we really do not know at all. I had been, forty-five years ago, just for a week's flight and hotel package holiday on Majorca with a friend who had won a holiday for two, but my wife had never been at all. Majorca was hardly typical, although it is not all beaches and bars, and my friend and I did enjoy exploring the island's railways in the warm March sunshine.

As we did with Italy, we thought we'd start with a suitable Great Rail Journeys escorted tour that included some historic cities: we are not beach-and-bar tourists. We found a very suitable tour which includes Madrid and Barcelona and a handful of interesting towns and cities in Andalusia, almost all by rail and mostly First Class, so we booked that up well in advance and started planning, complete with enrolling in a Spanish course at Stamford College. We do not expect to be able to hold a conversation in Spanish, but we hoped to be able to understand signs and labels and to ask for directions (and understand the answers!).

The journey out to Madrid involved an overnight stay in Biarritz, which we thought it would be good to revisit, but the way back from Barcelona was all to be done in one day, giving a rather late arrival in London, so we opted to stay in London for night at the end of the tour, as well as our customary stay in London on the way out, and return at our leisure the following day. We had Great Rail Journeys book the Premier Inn stays for us, and I bought First Class Advance tickets on LNER between Peterborough and London, leaving the local connection from and back to Stamford until nearer the travel date.

After a number of other exciting (but much shorter) trips the day finally dawned ... during a weekend when engineering work had closed our line, and rather than struggle with luggage on a replacement bus service we ordered a taxi to Peterborough station. That was interesting in itself, we looked at a local taxi firm via its iPhone app and thought that £40 was a bit too much for that trip, but when we tried a Peterborough firm we could do the same trip for only £25 - when it comes to taxis it seems to be worth shopping around.

We arrived at Peterborough half an hour before our booked train and imagined we would be able to have a cup of tea while waiting, but no, all the cafés etc on the station were closed. Sunday in Peterborough and nothing is open even at its busy railway station. Nothing is open there on weekday evenings, either: this city needs to wake up and grasp its opportunities.

We finally had a mug of tea on board the train, LNER First Class service at its current best, taking our orders as soon as we were on board. A few minutes late, but we were on our way and after what seemed like a very brief journey we were soon in London. We stayed in the Premier Inn Kings Cross, round the corner from the station and rather better-appointed than the St Pancras one where we have usually stayed. We enjoyed the hotel very much and may decide to use it again for future overnight stays in the Kings Cross St Pancras area.

Aftermath of breakfast on the train!

After a great night's sleep we met our Great Railway Journeys Tour Manager at their office at St Pancras and made our way to the international ticket barriers, through the security and passports checks and to the waiting area where we had our first breakfast, fruit salad bought from Marks & Spencer the evening before and coffee bought from the Station Pantry as usual. Soon our train was announced (30 minutes before departure, plenty of time!) and our second breakfast, the Eurostar light breakfast, was served just before we entered the Channel Tunnel. The rest of the Great Rail Journeys party on our tour, sixteen of us altogether including the Tour Manager, were sitting near us and we fell into conversation with a few of them nearby, as well as a Tour Manager from another tour whom we had met a few years before as a customer on a holiday in Italy - small world, isn't it?

Alone we would cross Paris by Metro and we have the app on our iPhones for buying the tickets, but in order to keep the group together, Great Rail Journeys provide a coach to make the transfer to Gare Montparnasse for the TGV south to Biarritz. Plenty of time was allowed, and as we usually do we had some lunch at Montparnasse, by which time the train was ready to board. This was a double-decked TGV and our party had seats on the upper level in First Class, a brilliant view and next to the buffet car, which availed us a cup (yes, a paper cup) of wine and later a similar cup of coffee.

The timing was all a bit tight now: Biarritz station is some way from the seafront where our hotel, and the restaurant where we were to have dinner, were located and we had a lengthy walk and a subway with lifts to get us off the station platform to our road coach for the transfer to the hotel, and no time to go to our rooms for we just had time to walk down to the beach for the restaurant at the time of their last  admission. The dinner was entirely table d'hôte and included in the holiday, although those who wanted it could pay for wine - which we declined, having had plenty on the train. It was a super meal, and the view over the beach as the sun set over the Bay of Biscay was a real bonus. Although this was not a beach holiday, a little bit of seaside at the start of the trip was good to have! When we arrived there were still surfers out there enjoying the big Atlantic waves and when we left it was dark and there was no-one in the sea.

It was a late night by our standards by the time we got to bed, and we had an early start in the morning to get a coach transfer to the railway station across the border in Irun, Spain, where we were to take the train to Madrid. Getting to the station was a bit of a puzzle for our coach driver because, like so many railway stations, it is in the middle of a huge rebuilding project and the normal access was unavailable, the entrance being via a group of temporary buildings and not at all obvious. Eventually we were dropped in the right place and made our way along soon-to-be-disused platforms to where our train was waiting, a four-coach electric set with our First Class section at the front, near the cafeteria coach. I understand that this station is on a through route to Hendaye, just across the border in France, where the TGV to and from Paris operates, but Irun appears to be the terminus of the service at present and is on the traditional Madrid-Hendaye route built to 5'6" Iberian Gauge. Our High Speed Train, though, after a slow start with several station stops, transferred via a gauge-changer at Valladolid-Campo Grande station to a high-speed Standard Gauge line for a fast non-stop run to Madrid Chamartin. I had heard of these Spanish on-the-move gauge changers but had not experienced this procedure before: apart from the slowing down for a short while, it was quite unnoticeable to the passenger, and slowing down at a major junction is not unusual.

This was quite a long journey and very comfortable, with a trolley refreshment service as well as the cafeteria car, reclining seats with big drop-down tables and plenty of space. It was quite clear that we were climbing for much of the route, starting in drizzle in a river estuary on the Atlantic coast and ending in Europe's highest capital city in warm sunshine, ears popping on occasion with the change in altitude. When we had lunch it was hard to pour the beer because it was so foamy as it released its dissolved gases in the low atmospheric pressure.

Madrid Chamartin is another station with major rebuilding in hand, a bit more advanced than at Irun (it seems the whole line is having an upgrade because we passed other places with building work, too) and we had the opposite problem: now it was hard for us to find the coach that was to take us to our hotel! However, we were soon there and smoothly delivered to the hotel where at last we could unpack a few things. As on our recent tour of the Alps and Venice, though, no stay on this tour was for more than two nights, so we never unpacked everything. It was a warm, sunny afternoon and we set off for a walk around the city centre, buying traditional Spanish Turrón (nougat) as gifts to take home. We had reserved a table for our evening meal at 8pm (about the earliest Spanish people eat in the evening) at a vegan restaurant not far from our hotel, visited in one of Michael Portillo's programmes on Madrid, and before dinner we took advantage of the offer mentioned to us by our Tour Manager of free entry to the Museo del Prado art gallery. After queuing we had less than an hour before we had to leave, but enough to be amazed, notably by The Garden of the Earthly Delights Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch.

We had travelled to the art gallery by bus from our hotel, and took the same bus route from there to our restaurant for dinner: the bus back was very crowded and was delayed in traffic in the city centre, but did get us there in good time. The restaurant was La Huerta Funky Castizo which may not sound like my sort of place ... but we went because it is a vegan restaurant: we thought that in Spain for over a week we might struggle to eat enough vegetables and we knew that everything there would be plant-based! It was excellent.

By the time we had walked back to the hotel it was bed time. While mad dogs and Englishmen may be the only ones out in the midday sun, it seems to me that only Madrid residents go out to dinner so late at night. All I wanted was to sleep, and that is what I did!

The Cathedral at the Royal Palace

The full day in Madrid began after the hotel breakfast with a tour by coach and on foot with a local guide who introduced us to some of the local sites and sights, including the Royal Palace (which we would visit properly later) and the Plaza Mayor. She also explained that the following day would be the feast day (and a public holiday locally) of the Patron Saint of Madrid, San Isidro, and that the whole week or so was a celebration for the city ... after that we saw his name everywhere! After this fascinating tour we set out on our own, eventually to see the Royal Palace but on the way to have what was to pass for lunch but would normally be a breakfast or morning snack, churros with chocolate! Again guided by Michael Portillo we went to  San Ginés, a traditional Chocolatería and relaxed at a marble-topped table with our cup of chocolate and six churros each: I felt full until well into the evening! 

Having pre-booked the Royal Palace we were able to join a faster-moving queue at the entrance but still (obviously) had to go through the security scanners. We had also booked a self-guided tour through an app on our iPhones and opted to take the "extended" tour for 100 minutes (there is a shorter one for 60 minutes) and were amazed at all that we saw. It is no use trying to describe it all: you have to see it. What I can say is that it is far, far bigger than Buckingham Palace in London, but then (a) it was built by the Spanish royal family over a few generations on the site of a former fortress from Islamic Empire days, whereas the British royal family bought Buckingham Palace and (b) it is no longer owned by the Spanish royal family and they do not live there, although the King does use it for state banquets and other state occasions. With a democratic government the King no longer needs all the administrative space that such a large palace affords. Now it belongs to Patrimonio Nacional (the Spanish state equivalent of English Heritage) and everyone feels they own it.

The interior décor of the palace has to be seen to be believed. Most of the rooms have painted ceilings, and the chandeliers are huge in almost every room. This is a place that symbolised the power of the imperial monarchy.

This dining table, still used for state banquets, occupies about half the ballroom, created from three rooms of the former queen's quarters. The table can be dismantled to allow the room to be used for balls.

Madrid has recently pedestrianised huge swathes of its central area and planted trees and grass in many places where there used to be traffic, including the riverside roads. I'd love to see Paris and London do the same! Just as when you build new roads they soon fill to capacity and within a few weeks the congestion is back to the level it used to be, so when you close roads you find that the congestion is no worse than before. Traffic finds its own level and road-building is self-defeating; green walkways are far more pleasant, and we were able to walk quite a long way from the palace towards our hotel before we first encountered a road, the Gran Via on which our hotel was situated. The substitution of trees for cars has to be good for the air quality in Madrid! It was early evening by the time we returned to our hotel room and we decided not to go out again but to have a supermarket salad in our hotel room, to shower and sleep, for we had walked a lot and stood a lot and needed to rest. Our wonderful time in Madrid was drawing to a close, with weather much like London's, but Andalusia was calling us, and the next morning we were to leave for Seville. 

To be continued!