419: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the train

Haven't written a blog for 6 weeks. A little bit remiss, but really I haven't been travelling very much lately. I remedied that at the weekend by taking the train to Madrid (via Valencia) on Friday and back to Salou (via camp de Tarragona) on Sunday. On the AVE train on Friday the speed was being displayed on a screen in each carriage and I marvelled as we hurtled through the countryside at speeds of up to 300 km/h. I remember daydreaming and wondering what prompted people to vote for Brexit. I can't imagine trains in UK ever reaching anything like that speed. Especially once we become socially and politically isolated when the drawbridge has been pulled up and the portcullis lowered. But this is not the platform for political diatribe against Brexiters. Talking about platforms, Madrid's Atocha railway station is, I think, the largest I have ever seen anywhere. It services suburban, regional, and high-speed AVE trains and part of it is given over to a large display of greenery - perhaps a lot of it taken from the nearby botanical gardens. On Friday evening it was a simple matter of changing from AVE to a suburban train to allow onward travel to my hotel, but on Sunday it took forever to find an exit to the street. I put my little wheelie suitcase in to left luggage and went for a wander around the city. When I came back a couple of hours later I was amazed by the length of the queue to put items into left luggage. Almost as long as that at the Prado. Not quite, of course. That queue wound round and round and reminded me of the old Soviet times when people queued for hours to visit Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square.

I spent much of Saturday on one of those open-topped tourist buses that now operate in many of the world's capital cities. I don't often use them as I think they are quite expensive. But perhaps one of the few benefits of being 'slightly' old is that pensioners rates are often applicable. Such was the case here. A 22 Euro ticket became 10 Euros for senior citizens. The hop-on, hop-off nature of these buses means that as anything 'takes your fancy' on the way round you can get off and explore in greater detail and then get back on to continue the tour. There are two separate routes around Madrid, the 'historical' tour and the 'city centre' tour. I managed them both.Here are a few of the pictures I took.

A quick video to finish off, to remind me of the rain pounding on the roof of the train as it whizzed through the countryside from Madrid to camp de Tarragona. I also quite liked Rex Harrison's quote "the majesty and grandeur of the English language is the greatest possession we have". (Notwithstanding that grandeur is originally from French).