We had information from the tour booklet that a certain bus would take us from the airport to very near our hotel, the Hotel Abba, in the Madrid city center.  With only a little translation difficulty we located the stop and only had about a ten minute wait before it arrived.  To make things even easier, ours was the last stop on the line, so we couldn’t miss.

After a rapid and sometimes harrowing ride into town the bus deposited us in the end terminal, an underground garage. We ascended and found ourselves in a large, busy open square, with streets running out from the center like spokes from a wheel.  Identifying which street was which was made nearly impossible by the lack of any signs, but after a couple of false starts we found the Calle de Americas, and in ten minutes entered the front doors of the Hotel Abba.  To our amazement, our room was ready, at ten o’clock in the morning, so we went up and found a bright, cozy room with blonde paneling and floor, a good view of Madrid, and a huge bathroom with shower.  Intent on adjusting to local time as quickly as possible, and with several hours to spend before our evening meeting and dinner with the tour guide, we stowed our gear and, guide book in hand, hit the streets of Madrid, in cool, sunny weather.

Madrid, like most European cities, has a great and easily negotiated subway system.  Still, we managed to get on a train going in the wrong direction our first try, but quickly figured out the system and were on our way.  First stop was Puerto del Sol, about a fifteen minute walk from the hotel, and one of the two major squares in old Madrid.  As we would learn over the next several days, these squares– and every city has them– are essential to Spanish life, and extremely well-attended by locals.  They are the places to see and be seen.  Sol was surrounded by shops, with apartments above, some government buildings, and the ubiquitous statue and fountain in the center.  A little before lunch time, it was not yet very crowded.   We took a look around, then went looking for a side street we had read about where one of the most famous guitar shops in Spain was located.  Papa was entertaining a vague idea of returning with a real Spanish guitar, but on entering the beautiful (and tiny) Jose Ramirez Guitars shop, those hopes were dashed.  A gentleman was seated giving a Ramirez a test run, in lovely and accomplished classical style, there were pictures of Eric Clapton and George Harrison on the wall, each clutching a custom Ramirez, and a nearby displayed, used Martin was going for 1200 Euros.  We admired the incredibly beautiful handcrafted works of guitar art on the walls, and moved on.

We found Plaza Mayor, or main square, a short distance away and were blown away by the scope and grandeur.  Probably twice the size of Puerto de Sol, it is the heartbeat and main gathering spot for the city of Madrid.  Tourists and locals mingled with street musicians, mimes, and Elvis impersonators, in a vibrant, happily infectious atmosphere.  Just off the square we found another destination we’d read about, the Place de San Miguel, which turned out to be very similar to the place we’d seen and loved in Philadelphia, a large, enclosed array of food vendors and bars.  We entered the already full, noisy scene and had our first encounter with the extraordinary Spanish tradition of Tapas.

Tapas, for the uninitiated, uninformed, or just plain slow, are a wide variety of snacks or appetizers, small portions; everything from cold olives, to calamari, to Chorizo, ham, potatoes, paella, a nearly infinite variety of cheeses and breads, mushrooms, etc. which has evolved in Spain, by combining and sharing, into a major meal, with beer and wine.  It is pretty much everyone’s lunch, and goes on all afternoon and into evening.  In fact Spain strictly observes Siesta, from about 1 to 4 p.m., in which everything closes except tapas bars and restaurants.  And, we learned later, there is a distinct difference between a Tapas Bar and a Tapas Restaurant.  In a Tapas Bar you can, and are actually expected, to throw your paper napkin on the floor when done.  Just don’t do that in a Tapas Restaurant; you’ll get thrown out.   Dinner, by the way, generally doesn’t get underway until about 10 p.m., maybe the most difficult thing to get used to in Spain.  The Spaniards get around that by eating tapas and drinking most of the afternoon and evening, it seems.  Anyway, Place de San Miguel was a wonderful amalgamation of Tapas vendors, and by the time we entered, the lunch crowd was going full force.  Several stalls had whole legs of ham hanging, and from these, very thin strips of meat were sliced, and with fresh baked bread and slices of cheese turned into what is probably the National Lunch, a ham and cheese, or Jamon y Quesa sandwich.  Unbelievable, and very unlike the pinkish, salty ham we use for sandwiches in the states, it’s more like bacon.  We walked through and looked at everything, then bought a jamon and queso each, and a glass of exquisite red wine, and shared a table with other lunchers in a shoulder to shoulder, party kind of atmosphere.  We think it goes like this every day.  With a pleasant mid-day buzz we ambled out into the bright sunlight of Plaza Mayor, and back up to the Metro station for the ride back to the hotel and a long-anticipated 2-hour nap.

On awaking, we still had a little more than an hour before meeting our guide, so we took off on another brief walking tour of shops down a side street near the hotel, ultimately settling into chairs streetside at a sweet little cerveceria, or beer bar, called Montaditos, for a draft of the local beer, Mahou, which was quite good. Sidewalk cafes are just about our favorite spot, anywhere in the world, so it was hard to get up and move on, but we had to get back to the hotel to begin the real tour part of this trip.

We gathered in the hotel dining room, and our guide came in and introduced himself. Born and educated in Lisbon, but living now in the southern Spanish coastal city of Cadiz, handsome, mid-thirties Luis was instantly likable, with an easy manner, perfect English, and intelligent sense of humor.  He gave a brief overview of the trip, and set out a few rules, chiefly how important it was to be on time for setting out the bags in the morning and being on time for the bus.  It was a large group, 43 of us, and the logistics of moving that size group around two countries was formidable. If you were consistently late, he said, you would have to sing for the group.  We moved then to a very nice buffet dinner and met the other travelers at our table, a Chinese couple from San Francisco, our age or maybe a little older; a couple from southern California, she a Hungarian graphic designer, he retired Air Force with shoulder-length hair and granny glasses; and a youngish, (we thought) Filipino couple from the Bay area, she strikingly lovely who, over the next several days, would provide many opportunities for good-natured ribbing as she posed for innumerable photographs. We got our marching orders: Wake-up at 0630, breakfast at 0700, on the bus at 0800 for Avila, Salamanca, and Coimbra. Lock and load.