Well she went and did it - went to the COLD! Why you ask when she could have either stayed at home in the COLD or come to Portugal with yours truly ( maybe that is why? )
After her wake up call I managed some more sleep then returned the hire car to Hertz forgetting the number one rule - fill it up!!!! It cost me 72 euros just for them to fill the car after I had only paid 168 euros for 9 days of driving - go figure.
Having done the arty thing on Monday and been a bit underwhelmed by the Prada, I did think a trip to the Sofia Reina gallery would be good as it actually had some art created in the last hundred years - nice thought, closed on Tuesday - should have gone yesterday instead of to the Prada.
Enough of the indoors, off to something outside, the Madrid Mio, and it is brilliant! They have rejuvenated several hectares along the river below the Latina district. It stretches for a kilometer or so and is beautiful. As the Mio was down along the river I thought a trip to the Estadio Vicente Calderon would be in order. This is the home ground of Athletico de Madrid, the 'Collingwood' of Madrid in that they win about every 20 years and are located next to the poor barrios, but they also pay mega millions for their players. I thought a contribution toward their next overpriced import was in order, and as I was a bit short in the shirt department I found a nice job without any advertising that had been made in Vietnam! I tried my first selfie with self in shirt and the stadium behind but I missed the stadium name - more practice is required!
Back up the hill and many k's around the Latina district followed. I can't say how many exactly as the team pedometer ( Dianne ) has absconded. The old districts are fascinating and I had lunch in a little tapas bar with some locals and a little old lady who just had a shot of cask ( yes cask ) red and some pork crackling - how healthy is that, but she looked about 80 not out.
More trudging around various inner city barrios followed and then I had some tortilla and red in preparation for my overnight train trip to Lisbon.
Arriving at the correct departure point with about an hour to spare I settled in to some book reading ( aka Kindle ). The peace was distiburbed when a bunch of very noisy 'Russians' arrived and parked themselves about 10m away. I say 'Russians' but they turned out to be Portuguese - the more of this new language I hear the more I think they sound quite similar. As I was trying to recoup the money wasted on the car refuelling I hadn't opted for a sleeper as I can't sleep on trains or planes, so why pay more ( actually I am just tight about some things as the train was booked before the car return ). I settled into car 9 with my fellow cheapskates and who should arrive - the 'Russians'! Two other young english speaking girls entered the carriage and their first words to each other were 'oh no, the drunks are in here!' Well it was a LONG... night. The 'Russians' only spoke in one volume - LOUD. After a passport check at the border and many other long conversations conducted from one end of the compartment to the other they actually got off at Coimbra - a university town???
On to Lisbon...
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