Madrid and Porto

Our whole adventure started with 5 days in Madrid, which sped by quickly. Neither of us had spent much time there (no time, in my case) and we were eager to discover a new city.

Spire on Church of San Geronimo

Our home exchange was a bit outside the city centre, but in a neighbourhood that offered lots of restaurants, shops and other diversions. We could walk to the old town, or take the metro, which was handily close by.

Our first full day there, we accidentally tripped across the Prado museum, but there were lines and we decided just to wander around and enjoy the ambience of the city itself. We were hard pressed to find a bad meal and the sun was shining, so life was pretty good. As it was a Saturday, there were lots of outdoor concerts and events, so our day was pretty full.

Iglesia San Geronimo

Cityscape

Wild and wacky architecture

The Prado was sufficiently impressive, and we spent the next morning wandering through the halls of paintings, sculptures and antiquaries. We were lucky and waltzed right in, like we owned the place, no lines, no waiting. (And apparently, no pictures!)

After that we went in search of lunch and decided that an Irish bar was the place for us. (We knew we'd have tons of opportunities for tapas and other specialties on the Camino de Santiago, so weren't to worried about missing out.) Lunch was running us about 30 euros a day, so we opted to dine in at supper most nights. 

Teddy gets his Guinness on

The next day we enjoyed the palace, parque de los retiros, admired the plaza del toros from the outside (I don't hold with bull fighting) and the La Latina neighbourhood. We indulged in a fantastic dinner at La Imparcial. We enjoyed it immensely.

One more full day of sight seeing and then we found ourselves rising early to catch our plane to Porto. We were a bit sad to say good-bye as it felt like we were just coming to appreciate the city.

Street lights, palace style

We've always loved Porto, since our first visit. It's a beautiful city with lots of great food, little winding streets and lots of hills. The Ribera (river) has day cruises and is lined with restaurants that are perfect for people watching. Our apartment was a good walk from there (maybe a half hour), but led us through interesting neighbourhoods and past the large cathedral (where Ron and I bought our passports for the Camino) and various plazas and buildings of note.

View from the opposite bank

Old neighbourhood on the cliff (Barranco)

Just a guy...walking his pig

Getting down the barranco

This is where we met our Camino buddies. The only downside with our stay there was that the lock on our Air BnB was not working properly, causing several minutes of angst every time we tried to enter the condo. The management company was unconcerned and only resolved the issue on the last full day of our stay. Quite irksome. Besides that, it was a lovely sojourn and a great way to get ready for our big walk.