My spouse has been negligent with keeping our  blog updated. So I must step in to fill his shoes.  His excuse is that I have been posting on facebook so there is no need to update our blog.  

The rest of our stay in Madrid was filled with more sight seeing. The last day included a visit to the royal palace and chapel.  

We are now in La Linea de Concepcion.  We arrived two days ago by train from Madrid.  We traveled through olive groove country known as the Andalusa region.  There were 1000's of acres of olive trees. The landscape was pretty barren otherwise.   Only a few small towns dotted the route along the way. We did travel through some rugged mountain terrain that reminded us of Montana. The train traveled on the side, and through tunnels in the mountain.  We arrived in Algeciras, the largest port city in europe, and took a taxi to La Linea.  We have spent three days here so far counting our travel day exploring the area.  

Yesterday we walked over the border to Gilbraltar.  It was just down the street.  The Rock of Gilbraltar looks like every picture I ever saw of it but bigger.  There is an old Moorish castle on it that up to 2010 housed the Gilbraltar prison.  You can ride a tram to the top but my husband was not interested.  He decided to forgo any wild ride adventure for the Atlantic. Gibralta is a little more upscale than on the spanish side of La Linea. Gibralta, being a British territory, had many local pubs. Lord Nelson was our choice for fish and chips and beef and ale pie.

Tomorrow we board the Chronos for the first part of our sea trip.  We checked out the marina where it will be docking to make sure where we needed to go.  It was not here yet as of 5pm.  I do hope it doesn't forget us.  We don't actually leave the dock until the next morning.  I don't know what kind of internet connection will be available.   We will do our best to keep you all posted.  We will arrive in the Canary Islands on Sunday.  We should have good communication there.

I promise that our next post will be the words of Harry Creekmore.  I know you are all looking forward to that.

Logging off for now.

Tess

Sent from Samsung tablet

Day 2

Slept until noon. That's 5 am central time in the US.  We both slept for 12 hours. Yesterday was a very long day.  Hopefully our biorhythms will kick in soon. However we headed out the door re energized and ready to go. It is a rainy and cool day today but with umbrello, camera and euros in hand we headed out for some more exploration of the city.  We took a nice stroll in the Parque de el Retiro. This would be an equivalent to Central Park in New York but on a smaller scale.   We actually ended up here in error because my husband was reading the map and insisted that we were going the right direction.  Is this not a universal man thing.  Lol. We ultimately became very familar with the central part of the city.  Later today we will try to figure out how to get pictures posted on the blog in order to make things a little  more interesting.  We are still trying to do the best we can with spanish but find that body language, pointing and gesturing seems to be a universl language. We are still all cave men at heart.  That is about it for today. Check back in with us tomorrow.

Sent from Samsung tablet

Finally arrived in Madrid about 10:30 am. We had a delay in Atlanta because the first plane just plain broke....just what one wants to hear when they are flying.  The good news is that the second plane worked just fine.  

After settling in the apartment that we booked we found that we still had some energy. Not bad for two old folks after no sleep all night.  We are staying downtown in the older district of Madrid. It is quite quant with lots of restaurants. In fact there is one just a couple of doors down that has a flamingo dancer show every evening that is definitely on our agenda tomorrow. We took a nice stroll after we settled in and took in a couple of popular spots. We started at the Plaza de Santa Anna for some good food and wine and then to the Plaza de Major, A popular and historic location. Although our spanish is not very good everyone has been very nice, helpful and tolerant of us Americans even though most do not speak much English. Harry of cource has been trying to fit in in his usual manner of trying to fit a square into a round hole approach.  His success rate is amazinly good.  So he is having a great time. 

Accordingly to one waiter Barak Obama is very popular here. Just saying that I found this interesting. 

 We also learned in this short time that whenever and where ever you go you must have Tapaz. I will leave it up to you to do a google search of this.  So far Madrid seems to meet or exceed our expectations.  We can't wait to do some more exploration tomorrow.  And for those who know me well, to take a lot of pictures.  Will keep everyone up to date the best we can.  Stay tuned.

Tess (aka Glendora)

Sent from Samsung tablet

On the road

We are in Atlanta waiting for the flight to Madrid. In Nashville got a "precheck"pass so we didn't have to take our shoes off. That was good but both our bags were over 50 pounds so we got stuck with the charges .

Flight to Madrid is about 9 hours. I think wine and sleep will work. Will update. When we arrive and have Wifi.

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We will be leaving in two days.