We woke up in Seville and got on the road early to head back to Madrid. The drive was 5 hours on easy highways - until we reached Madrid itself, which was of course very busy and unpleasant. We were returning the car to the airport, though, which was considerably easier to find and navigate than the city, so it wasn't too bad.
We stayed at the taCH Hotel near the airport for easy access. For some reason I had not printed out a map of this area prior to arrival, so we had a bit of an adventure trying to find it that was resolved when I had the idea to ask a taxi driver to look it up on his GPS. Whew! Safe & sound in Madrid. After resting for a few minutes and eating some jamon-flavored Ruffles, we decided to take the metro back into the city.
The Prado, Spain's greatest art museum, is free on Tuesday nights, so we took advantage of this to go in and see a few of the highlights. I was most interested in seeing Heironymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, which proved to be much better in person than I had even hoped. It wasn't crowded, either, so we had plenty of time to peruse at our leisure.
Then we walked over to Retiro Park nearby.
I'm really glad we decided to give Madrid another go - I was not impressed the first day we arrived, but had a much better feeling about it this second time around.
We stopped at a tiny hole in the wall tapas bar and ordered a couple of waters, and then they immediately started bringing us food. We ordered those meatballs but I think it was the only food we paid for - everything else they just gave to us. It was pretty awesome! I ended up ordering a beer because I felt bad. The whole dinner cost us 9 euros.
We left Madrid the next day at noon and got home at 9:00pm Eastern. It was a long day!
We are glad to be home, obviously, but already jonesing for the next trip. Paris 2014! Unless I change my mind.
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