Madrid meander

We´re in Madrid for our last couple of days in Europe. It´s stinking hot over here, but whereas Rome seemed to have no shade and was overrun with tourists Madrid has a laid back, spacious, easy feel and there are plenty of lush green parks where you can throw down you backpack and have a nap - as we did yesterday.

Our train journey over here from Barcelona was the best we have been on in Europe, by a country mile. We travelled first class on one of the super fast trains. It topped 300km/hr at its fastest and it was like travelling on business class in an aeroplane with supercomfy seats and stewards and train hostesses serving drinks and a light lunch. Best of all was the scenery. I took heaps of pictures from the train, unfortunately I cannot upload them from this computer, but will do so from Joburg. We passed flat fields and rolling hills of ochre and red brown (very much the colour of the Australian outback) with jagged, quartz-like cliffs in the distance and little towns and stone houses popping up here and there. It almost looked like a Martian landscape at times. In between were enormous fields of sunflowers.

We had a brilliant few days in Barcelona. The city is simply one of the best in Europe. We stayed in a hotel just a few minutes from La Ramblas, the main boulevard. It was in an ¨interesting¨ location - the street outside was literally swarming with street prostitutes of every shape and size.

We visited all the Gaudi buildings. The Sangrada Familia was unfortunately covered in a lot of scaffolding and had almost as many cranes hovering above it as those amazing tapering towers on either end. We spent an afternoon in Parc Guell, the park with the twirling Gaudi houses, mosaic lizards and terrace with on curvy benches. It was packed with tourists but we managed to find some quiet bits further into the park.

So we have two more days in Europe...we´ve been away nearly four months. We´re looking forward to a good break in Joburg trip ¨before setting off on part two of our BEEG adventure -Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and India. Should be able to upload heaps of photos soon....