Spain – Day 1

October 2011

On 9th October 2011 I ran the Liverpool marathon. The first marathon in I think 23 years. My time was 5 hours and 24 minutes. The next day we were on the train to Paris for a Refuges des Fondu special and then to Madrid to relax. In planning this trip I forgot that I wouldn’t be able to walk after the marathon so someday we hope to revisit Madrid.

We arrived late the previous night to the sight of a man in speedos holding a sign in the Plaza del Sol. The sign read;

Respect this man who has to undress to live

No idea why and the police left him alone.

Our first full day in Madrid was spent on an open tour bus. It was a great way to see the city and not something we would normally do. I prefer to wander and stop to take photos. Hard to do that on a bus but it’s hard to wander after running a marathon so you take what you can get. We took the extended tour which took us to where Madrid had turned a motorway into a river and public park area. Great! I need to explore that next time.

The city is beautiful. I love the pastel colours and the architecture is pristine. We stayed in a nice enough hotel just off Plaza del Sol which certainly lived up to its name. It was a very hot day so I bought a Buff. One of those neckerchiefs bikers wear but the instructions showed how to make it into a head covering to protect me from the heat.

As I couldn’t walk much food was whatever we bumped into. We didn’t find an amazing restaurant or have a life changing food experience like I did in Paris the previous year. If you ignore the churros that is. I’ll get to them in a future post.