Follow Us Two: In Europe and the UK: Day 89 to 91

We set off from Barcelona to Madrid with Spanish music playing in the background to keep us entertained. Madrid is in the centre of Spain and so the bus ride took us a whopping 9hrs! Lucky for us, our trip was broken up by a lunch stop in Zaragoza. As you can imagine, this was of even more importance to me than Ash - as 9 hours without a bite to eat is a scary thought. We were easing into Spanish life because after a lunch of tapas, it was back onto the bus where we had an afternoon siesta. We arrived in the north of Madrid, where our hotel was located, at about 7:30pm. Lucky for us, Contiki had organized dinner for us around the corner... with free sangria. We had a delicious meal with a number of different tapas before settling down to watch the U21 football World Cup final. The final was between Italy and Spain,nand Spain won which made the remainder of the evening extremely festive in the city.

Day 2

Our second day in Madrid was our last full day on Contiki before we set off to the South of Spain. We began our day at 8am with a tour of the Spainish royal palace which was unbelievable. There were rooms covered completely in porcelain and others which were designed to seat over 100 guests just for dinner. There was an entire room for "the ceremony of getting dressed" which I thought was very excessive. After giving it some more thought, the amount of time Ash spends getting ready - there may be a need for a separate designated room.

After a visit to the royal palace we hopped back on the bus and heading out of Madrid to The Valley of the Fallen. Franco, a dictator who ruled Spain for over 50 years, had this vision of building a massive church into a mountain side. The sight he chose is in a national park which also forms part of a memorial for the victims of the Spanish civil war. The size of the Cathedral is difficult to explain, but the cross statue on the top is 150 meters high.

Apparently in winter, when it snows, the church is the most beautiful place to be in Madrid. We ended a full sightseeing day with a festive dinner and some salsa dancing. The salsa dancing club is something we had never experienced before. We got two salsa cocktails on entrance, and then joined in to some Salsa dancing which is guided and directed by a professional Salsa Instructor. Ash said that despite my long legs, I was surprisingly very good at Salsa. The two cocktails on entrance probably helped my dancing rhythm, never mind her cocktails probably blurring her vision. It was so much fun though, and one of our main highlights in Madrid!

The 'last night festivity' kept us up later than expected so we almost missed our bus to Malaga. Luckily, we got on and we were off to the South of Spain for a week of relaxation.