Keith & Julie: day 2 in Madrid: we walked until it hurt, and then we walked some more

Started the day a good way: with a big sleep in followed by a nice hotel breakfast. You know that often hotel breakfasts are nothing like your classic cafe scrambled eggs n bacon with flat white - and Hotel Atlantico's breakfast is not a cafe breakfast but I enjoyed the Spanish mixture of foods. I only had one small pastry - how's that for will power! No barista but...

We strolled off towards Plaza de Espana, it was not yet hot outside, and then eventually onto the royal palace. 

At the palace, the Security folks said "no photos" in the most impressive rooms - the Throne Room was fantastic but no photos allowed??? There were signs in the armoury saying no photography but before then it was just uniformed security occasionally saying No. 

The armoury was interesting: to see the range of armour, swords and more. Some of the swords were very beautiful - if you can call a weapon designed to kill that...

I'd heard that men and horses now are taller & larger than hundreds of years ago - and the suits of armour for men and horses showed that. 

After the palace, we decided to find the railway station we are using on Sunday night, check out the left luggage arrangements and then head back to hotel. It took us a few hours to do all that - we walked to Plaza Royal, looked in Mercado de San Miguel for a place for a cool drink but it was a zoo! We sat outside and had a cold beer, rested for a while. 

We then walked down to the Atoche Renfe station and checked it out. By then Julie had blisters on her feet so we used the Metro to head back to hotel. 

Jules had a siesta nap, I mucked around with uploading photos, booked a guided half-day bus tour for tomorrow so that we get a fast intro to Madrid from the tourist guide (and also means Julie doesn't have as much walking)  - and we had a drink on 9th floor before heading out again. 

Took Metro to Sol to find the Latina area, and walked around to a couple of tapas places Julie found in Lonely Planet guide. One was closed/OOB and the other was a stand up bar - so we wandered back to a side lane we had past and settled there. I'm learning that some of the Spanish dishes are much larger than I'd expected - we did some damage to the Paella anyway! Had a Nice Alborino wine - you don't see that grape much in Australia. Ignored the O'Reilly's bar in the lane and headed back to Hotel via Metro again. 

That's all for now...

Day 2. Day trip to Abu Dhabi

We arrived without any great fuss at Dubai. Some delays getting through immigration, then again at the hotel waiting for our drive to turn up, but then it was off to Abu Dhabi for a day of sightseeing. Actually it is worth saying more about this. The delays at Dubai for passport control are really bad.  On both visits the queues were not physically long, they just went incredibly slowly. We spent MORE THAN AN HOUR in the queue. At 2am when you are tired this is enough to stretch the patience. In fact I will reconsider ever travelling through Dubai again.

Striking office building on the way to Abu Dhabi.
No problem with getting a window seat here

The drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi is interesting. Not the same buzz of activity that there was in 2010, with many building sites standing idle. As you can see from the photo it was one of the better days in terms of visibility. The sky actually looked blue a bit :-)

Our main purpose for visiting Abu Dhabi was so that Christine could see the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. I had been there before but this was the first visit for Christine. Our timing meant that we only had a short time to see the inside but it was long enough, then a good look at the exterior with all that marble and inlay and tile work.

After that we headed down to the Corniche and had lunch overlooking the water followed by a visit to the Palace Hotel which I didn't enjoy at all. Ugly. Pretentious. Luxury for its own sake.

Then back to our hotel in Dubai for a beer, a swim in the pool, a quick dinner, online checkin for the morning's flight and a sleep.