Ninety Nine Steps  

Our flight from Cairo to Madrid ran into a ‘speed bump’. Our flight involved flying first to Vienna, Austria then another flight to Madrid. Upon check in, we were informed that the flight from Vienna to Madrid didn’t exist and that we were not confirmed on any flight to Madrid. We were told that one option was to spend the night in Cairo and stand-by for a morning flight or we could take a late afternoon flight the following day directly to Madrid. The thought of trying to find a hotel by the airport in Cairo was not appealing and, besides, we had Pension reservations in Madrid. After a serious talk with the Austrian Airlines customer service agent she found a flight for us, with a very tight connection from Vienna to Madrid. We made the flight but our luggage didn’t.

We arrived in Madrid about midnight and, now, needed to make our way to downtown Madrid. We checked on a taxi but too expensive (remember the part about the tight budget) so, after asking several people, we took a combination of bus and Metro Subway into Madrid. Luck be with us, we arrived at the right subway station in the right area in downtown Madrid. With only our day packs and a hotel address we now needed to find our Pension. After, again, asking several more people we finally found ‘home’. Whew…. we made it. As it turns out the Pension was a ½ Star (what a change from our 5 star hotels in Egypt!) but we were tired, the water was hot, the room was clean and at that point we didn’t care. Oh, it also had 99 steps to the fourth floor (no lift) where we were staying. What happened to ‘truth in advertising’ or maybe we just didn’t read the fine print on the web site!!

Madrid is probably the most beautiful large city we have visited. We were thoroughly enthralled with this magnificent city with its old ornate and interesting architecture. The next day the weather was terrific and we decided to see both the old and new sections of the city in different open top tour buses. We preferred the old section with the gleaming buildings and black wrought iron railings covering the windows. The Plaza’s were many, all distinctive and all very beautiful honoring historical men important to the history of the country. We toured the Royal Palace and the new Cathedral that John Paul II inaugurated in the mid 1990’s. The city is a great ‘walking city’ and if you get tired of walking there is always the Metro to get you back to you hotel room quickly. To really see this city with the museums, parks, plaza’s, and other points of interest you could easily spend a week.

Since our luggage arrived 1 ½ days late and we only planned on one week in Spain we needed to reevaluate our travel plans. Since we didn’t have enough time to travel to other parts of Spain so we decided to stay in Madrid for an additional day to see more of this picturesque city and allow us more time in Portugal.

After an overnight train to Lisbon and picking up a rental car we were off to towns unknown in the south of Portugal. The trip is now getting short but we will have many more stories to tell.

Where’s Pat and Mike??