From Madrid to Vienna

We didn't walk the whole way, but Jon is sure that we walked more today than we did on any of the other days of touring.  The views were not as good, but we had a clear destination.

It is hard to believe, but we were in our Madrid hotel room this morning at 7 AM. Jon had us fully organized, so we were on our way before 7:30.  Walked down the sleepy street to the Teatro Metro stop, dragging our small bags over the cobblestones.  One the of connections required that we go down four long flights of stairs -- luckily we never had to climb back out of that level.  We got to the airport in plenty of time and then walked from one end all the way to the other end.  But no troubles.  The plane wasn't even full (for once) so we each had two seats and we watched movies and napped and read for eight hours.  We each watched "Spotlight" -- excellent.  I finally saw "Wall-E" and Jon finally saw "The Big Lebowski,," movies that we have had on our lists for a long time.

At JFK we had another end-to-end walk through the terminal (Delta must be pretty low on the totem pole there), but the good news is that Jon got them to put us on an earlier flight to National at 3:00 instead of waiting until 7:30 to Dulles.

Got on the not-as-fancy-as-Madrid Metro and headed for home.  If we had taken the bus from Spring Hill Road, we would have earned super cool points for getting ourselves all the way on public transportation -- but we texted Anna and she picked us up and that was very nice.

We don't really have a major wrap-up to offer, having shared all the many details of the last two weeks, but there are a couple of categories that come to mind.  It is impossible to rate or compare views or scenery -- it was so dramatic and beautiful all over the place.

Best Bathroom of All:  Picasso Museum in Malaga

Favorite Kind of Museum:  local and focused, with a clear story:  Picasso Museum, Sugar Museum in Motril, Catalunya History Museum in Barcelona

Best Guidebook Advice:  Sagrada Familia as a TOP CHOICE

Best Spontaneous Day Trip: Gibraltar

Best Discovery for Sitting Down:  Cafe con leche (almost 2/3 milk!)

Most Adventuresome Tapas:  Mercado San Michel in Madrid

Best Hosts Ever:  Peio's family

Longest Day:  Touring with Peio's family in the Basque Country

Only Spice We Noticed: Salt