Madrid & Barcelona
Madrid and Barcelona were way too rushed. I spent too much time messing about making arrangements for trains and flights to and from places and too little time just enjoying the places themselves. Anyway, I did get to see some of the wonderful architecture of Gaudi in Barcelona: Park Guell, Casa Batllo, and the cathedral, La Sagrada Familia - still under construction. I got lost in Madrid trying to reach the Prada Museum via the back streets and instead found, in short order, the red-light district, some very up-market apartments, and the financial district where I stumbled into an art gallery just opening an exhibition of neo-realist photography spanning the fascist periods of Spain and Italy through to the late'50s. I should have slept on the train from Madrid to Barcelona but instead spent most of the night in the dining car with a Peruvian family man with a US green card who takes a class in Madrid every Friday for his accounting qualification, a Canadian IT specialist o...