ESPANOL

Thursday 3rd June and onto Bibao. A large town on the North Coast of Spain.

The best part was the amazing Guggenheim museum which we went to the nect day. There was a really good Richard Serra exhibition and some odd Anish Kapoor sculptures as well as a puppy made of flowers!

After Bilbao it was on meant to be onto Madrid however we could not find any accommodation for the weekend so on Saturday the 5th we took a very very long train the all through the mountains to Santander... We thought we would spend all weekend on the beach as it is really a beach resort but guess what? It rained.

Santander = BOring

We did find a festival of Spanish culture where some men were dressed as sheep and jumped up and down ringing bells...not sure the significance of that though but it did make the place more interesting.

Monday 7th June

Up mega early at 5 to catch the train to Madrid, on the trains in Spain they x-ray your bags, it's like being at the airport.

We got to Madrid and it was so hot! The room at POP hostel was basic and the bathroom a bit dodgy! However it's in a pretty cool area with lots of narrow streets and individual shops and restaurants. we even manged to find an English bookshop with a full bar. On the ground floor there were literally 20,000 books and above a bar! So we had a couple of drinks and bought a couple of books...

Tuesday 8th June

So hot again. We went to the Prado museum which wasn't my cup of tea, lot's of old religious paintings...very beautiful but there are only so many you can handle in one day.

Then we had lunch where Rob sampled the menu del dia and i opted for chicken! The second museum we went to, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, was much more my thing. They had Paintings of all styles and from all time periods. You weren't just looking at the same thing over and over again. Artists included... Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Manet, Monet, Mondrian and some really Early Van Goghs which you would not recognise to be his at all!

Wednesday 9th June

All morning was spent at the station trying to sort out our train tickets to Barcelona then Milan. When we got there the ticket number was A150..ours was A178! It rained all day so we had to use our 'Paris' umbrella...hmm. Looked around the outside of the Palicio Real then headed to the Bernabeu stadium where we spent ages in the Shop!