Staring our final day.....

.....in Madrid.

We have spent two days doing mainly family based stuff. with a little eating and/or shopping.

Nothing huge to report, Madrid is as busy and chaotic as ever: people everywhere, construction everywhere, tourists everywhere, noise and bustle everywhere. When you add the heat, it will be our coolest day today at 34C, it is a very tiring place. If you plan to visit Madrid to chill, you are making a mistake.

Madrid is always under construction and they seem to be continually tunneling: new metro lines, new underground car parks, new freeways under Plaza Mayor. But a lot of the recent construction work is due to some recent legislation about building maintenance being mandatory and state supervised. Apparently the state sends inspectors around regularly and orders maintenance be done if things are not up to scratch. This probably sounds a little interventionist to our Western ears, it also means that Hapsburg Madrid, el Madrid de los austrias, is looking rather nice, with beautifully restored facades. We are staying in that part of town and the buildings are lovely.....which does you no good, as I have been slack in the photography department here in Madrid, and you are merely relying on my words.

The less attractive part of Madrid is the litter. I am siding with Marjan on the littering issue, and want to add dog-poopers to the list. We are early birds, and have been out whilst the city has literally armies of people cleaning up the previous nights' (and into the mid AMs) debris. This part of Madrid is basically wall to wall eating/drinking places, most of those places are open late....very late......and most do a poor job at keeping their clients on the right side of hurling stuff onto the pavements that they use for their outside tables.

It is a clash between the beautiful older city and the disgusting debris on the streets for mind space in this tourists head. A few more bins, a little more care and Madrid could be as lovely a city as you could get for it's size.

The family stuff has been great. Both Mum's and  Dad's families have been amazingly warm and welcoming, as usual. It has been particularly good to have two of the girls with us during our visits. The Spanish lessons have paid off with much better levels of communication and less reliance on the English speaking members to chat.

So we all head off in different directions today, Marjan and I back to Melbourne and 'our boys'.

So bye from the blog for another little while