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Iberian Spring: Day 11 Madrid to Barcelona
Soundtrack: “Lola”, Spanish cover version A fairly easy travel day, if any day on not quite enough sleep is easy. I didn’t finish writing the last blog entry until around 2am, and we’d forgotten the hostel does breakfasts in assigned shifts, we’d forgotten to change ours so 8.15 to 9am it was. We’d exchanged pleasantries with one of the other guests, who was from Norway. As it was our last day and his last day we had a bit more of a chat, and introduced ourselves. At which point he says his name is Sven. Sven from Norway. Sometimes the cliches just exist. Nice chap. The other amusement breakfast brought…
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Iberian Spring: Day 10 Madrid
Soundtrack: “Vogue”, Madonna Sunday was fashionista day for us. After a hostel breakfast we headed north to the Museo del Traje, which google seems to think “traje” means suit. Maybe it does, but it’s a fashion museum, so it has more than suits. It’s a collection of almost 400 years of Spanish clothing. including what the aristocracy wore as well as regular folks. So there were some wonderfully intricate posh jackets, amazing frocks, and embroidered waistcoats from the 17th and 18th centuries. The path runs chronologically, and highlights other events at the time that had an impact on the fashion, as well as times fashion was at the forefront of…
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Iberian Spring: Day 9 Madrid
Soundtrack: “Spanish Bombs”, The Clash | “Hieronymous”, The Clouds Today is art day. Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado, or The Prado for short, houses some of the world’s most magnificent paintings by white people. It’s amazing how language translation works, here Prado means things of beauty, while in Australia Prado means ugly faux-tank driven by white people. According to google translate, prado actually translates to meadow, which really neither describes a multi-storey building with over 100 rooms full of priceless artworks, nor a metal box that flattens all in its path, plants or otherwise. (Apparently there used to be a meadow where they built the museum, sometimes the truth is…
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Iberian Spring: Day 8 Seville to Madrid
Soundtrack: Hala Madrid y nada mas (the Real Madrid anthem, as they won’t be playing it tonight at Bernabeu) We had a midday train so took the morning fairly easy. My cold turned into the annoying cough so neither of us got the best night’s sleep. So we got up, packed, and trundled our way towards the trainstation, about 2km but this ay we got our steps up. Or something. We found a little place for breakfast, they seemed to specialise in sandwiches so it was looking like L would be left with ham and eggs, but they understood “sin gluten”. They understood very well, the guy taking our order…
