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Exploring Madrid

22 Apr Exploring Madrid

Posted at 17:44h in Spain by
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After a day of jetlag and staying close to the airport, we rode into the busy historical center of Madrid to stay at a private room at a hostel, where Jessica is joining us.

palace_courtyard
Over the course of the next few days we explore the many monuments and historical sites of Madrid—there are palaces, churches, archways, and even an Egyptian tomb. We enjoy some cervezas, sangria, and tapas while people watching in some of the many plazas. We wander around and get lost in the many crooked streets and meander through the oldest, biggest open-air flea market in Spain. We soak in all the smells and sights around us and watch some street performers in the plazas at night.

It’s been great to share part of our travel with one of our daughters and we tried to enjoy every moment of it.

We also learned during our stay in Madrid, that it is pretty much impossible to find white gas for our stove. Although we found some outdoor places selling the stoves and bottles, we could not find any place to sell the fuel—go figure! We are sent from sports stores to hardware stores to plumping stores back to outdoor stores throughout our quest. Good thing is we get to see a lot of Madrid while searching for the stuff and as a bonus we learn about 10 different ways of naming white gas in Spanish…unfortunately, it did not help us find any.

Today we say, “see you later” to our daughter again before her flight back home–and it is still not getting any easier. But maybe we’ll get to share some more of our travels with her again in a few months when she returns to England for more work.

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2 Comments
  • Jim & Sandra
    Posted at 18:45h, 22 April Reply

    Glad you are enjoying Spain. We couldn’t find benzina blanca for our Whisperlite either. We ended up using unleaded petrol (apparently if you use some denatured alcohol for priming it isn’t very sooty). We did love Spain but found it a bit like Alice in Wonderland, where nothing is quite what it seems – hotels that only open one day a week, disappearing campsites and the infuriating siesta that closes everything down in the afternoon. On the upside, places like Cordoba, Toledo, Cadiz, Arcos, Barcelona and Seville are so beautiful they make you want to cry. Hope the hills aren’t too daunting 🙂

    J & S

    PS Keep an eye on blog.cyclingintheworld.com – some news coming soon!!

    • Ron
      Posted at 03:20h, 23 April Reply

      Looks like we are going to use regular gas as well to cook with; we just thought it was strange to sell the stoves and the bottles but not the white gas…We can see some of the mountains from the city, hopefully they won’t be too steep. Looking forward to your “news updates” 🙂

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