Always Pack Your Travelling Socks!

 Our last full day in Madrid (sad face!) and we did make the most of it!

Yesterday I was stupid enough to wear my really good walking boots with really crappy socks, meaning that by the time we got back to the hotel my feet there on the verge of blisters and looking worse for wear. I've only got tiny feet as it is, all of my lovely curves on dainty feet don't really mix!! Safe to say today there was no way I was wearing my snug walking boots so the only other option was my lovely flat brown shoes that are no good for walking and pinch my toes. Safe to say that the word of the day has been: dolor! (pain!).


We started off at around the same time today as we did yesterday as most places don't open until 10am anyway. I love the Spanish. We made our way straight into town to visit the Museo de Plazo! We jumped off the Metro in central Madrid at Benco de Espana and it looked a bit like a war zone when we arrived! There were police everywhere and M said he saw a bomb squad vehicle,  not to mention the sound of what we thought was gunfire, pretty scary I must say. Thankfully, after a few minutes or sanding around wondering WTF was going on, we saw it was a protest that was actually quite calmly moving through the centre. They were throwing smoke grenades which was the reason for the loud bangs and smoke, but the reason behind the protest was fairly innocent and to do with the Uber protests. More on the story here: http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/18/spanish-taxis-block-central-madrid-in-uber-and-cabify-protest/

We avoided the protest and wandered up the road to the Museo de Prado. The Prado is an art gallery type museum instead of a museum as we would think with artefacts etc. instead this has lots of classic paintings in it. We spent about 2-3 hours wandering around the various galleries, and saw some incredible pieces. The Flemish section was really interesting, and had lots of paintings dating back from our period of re-enactment too (1460-1485). My sister, Teapot, will be really interested with the painting I sneaked a photo of because of the little white do that looks a lot like Princess! :)


One of the most amazing paintings we saw was that of Mary Tudor! The standard painting that everyone has seen in books and on TV etc, we got to see it in real life. That was a pretty incredible experience! We even got to see the really famous painting of her husband, Philip!

When left the Prado, I was not even trying to pretend that my feet were's absolutely killing me and we headed for the shopping district down the road. We wandered past Prada, Versace, Diesel, and lots of other brands... but I am far too cheap to spend 200E/£200 on a pair of trainers, despite the pain in my feet!! The hobble down the road for a few miles did allow us to see some gorgeous architecture though, I really love the shutters and little balconies at the windows. I love Spain!


We gave up in time for Tapas! I'm loving this idea of tapas! Lots of delicious dishes for not very expensive price! M got to have his Cafe Bonbon and I got to try gazpacho soup... which was interesting! I knew it was a Spanish soup usually tomato based, but I'd totally forgotten it was cold until I took the first spoonful!!! Definitely different!! The meatballs in curry sauce were nice though!

We realised pretty soon that we were not going to find me some trainers in the shopping district (as I refuse to pay 200E for trainers...) and hopped back on the metro (literally hopped, so much pain!) and headed towards Gran Via which is another main shopping district... luckily this shopping district is much more my type and houses a HUGE Primark!! So excited about that!

I grabbed a cheap (and I mean cheap, 8E!) pair of trainers and some fresh dry socks from Primark and muddled through with poor Spanish at the counter. Next stop the Farmacia for some ibuprofen from the very good looking pharmacist with the lovely accent and a quick swap over of uncomfortable shoes to trainers that were two sizes bigger than I normally take! Luckily really comfy trainers! The ibuprofen worked double quick time and by the time we landed at Sol station I was feeling 80% more comfortable.


















Outside Sol station is a big area that reminds me of Trafalgar square as its full of tourists, street entertainers and pickpockets. M caught LARPer poor thing and I had to peel him away from the strangely dessed person before we headed down the road towards the Mercado de San Miguel.

The Mercardo de San Miguel (Market of Saint Michael) is one of the oldest covered markets in Madrid (possibly even in Spain) and sells all sorts of tapas type foods such as meats, shellfish, cakes and of course lots of wine! I love Spain... we spent a while wandering around the market before deciding on a plan for dinner: buy bits from the market and some wine from the petrol station near our hotel and then eat back indoors as the market was really crowded.



We purchased chorizo, parma ham, anchovies, breadsticks, and two slices of tortilla (Spanish Omelette) and took them back on the Metro with us, 100% planning to have a quiet dinner and maybe head to the pub for a night cap. Events however took another turn and we were completely stuffed after dinner and didn;t actually move! Early(ish) night instead, nursing the blisters on my poor toes, and we'll be ready for the long journey home tomorrow.








I really don't want to leave... Its been a lovely 48 hours in Madrid, I've been impressed with how much Spanish I have remembered from years 7 & 8 and how well I've muddled through (with LOTS of help from Google Translate!!). This little trip away has actually cemented my mind that I need a new job and a new direction, so watch this space as plans are afoot!

Until tomorrow, adios y buenos noches!

Windows and Linux fans don't mix...

  

Day two in Madrid has gone really well!! I've only almost died 5 times today! White vans are just as evil in Spain as they are in the UK!

M set an alarm for 8am and met The Sleep Monster at half 8, she apparently hurled abuse at him and grumbled when he turned the light on (I have zero recollection of this and think M may be making it up!!).

When we eventually got out of the hotel (and after we dropped into Maccy Ds for breakfast...) we jumped onto the Metro and headed for the Reina Sofia which is billed as one of the best museums and modern art galleries, housing works by numerous artists including Picasso and Dali





We finally found the Reina Sofia after almost wandering into a government building and being politely told to move on (note: just because the building is "big and pretty" doesn't mean its the one we're after!!). The gallery its self is housed in a really nice building and I loved the archways! Got some cracking shots!




Here's the bit where we have to admit we're both either uncultured swines or a bit too dim to get it: surrealism! Honestly, we've seen loads today from wandering around the galleries but after about 45 minutes wandering around the Reina Sofia we just didn't get get it. Picasso... ? Dali...? There were some other ones too who are apparently really famous (uncultured...) but we kind of gave up. I enjoyed seeing the photography pieces, but even some of them were a bit way out for our tastes!






Moving on we went towards the Palacio Real de Madrid (Royal Palace) which is the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family. We went via a shopping centre and paid 15E for a data sim card with 2GB data that also allows tethering! We've both spent about £10 with EE/T-Mobile in a day being given a piddly 100 or 200Mb of data. This is not worth it, tip for anyone travelling abroad: get a local Sim card for your phone! When you can use Google Maps and Google Translate you will thank me!!












The Palace building is from the 17th Centruy and absolutely gorgeous architecture! We were lucky enough to get inside the Palace and do the tour, you get to wander around some of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen in my life. I lost count of the number of chandeliers I fell in love with and the table! OH! The table!! Someone has clearly been at it with a ruler, it was stunning!!! Sadly we weren't allowed to take photos inside the Palace, but here is a photo from Google showing what the dining room looked like! Gorgeous! I also realised that, at some point in my life, I really should invest in a throne! I could have brought a mini desk throne.... but decided not to!

After the Palace we decided to find a little tapas cafe down the road, and have some lunch. By lunch I mean salad. By salad I mean fruit. By fruit I mean grapes. We had wine for lunch! I love the Spanish culture! The conversation with the cafe owner went something like this:


Owner: "Would you like drinks?"
Us: "just one glass of wine, its lunchtime"
Owner: "no problem, sit down"

Then he brings us a small plate of nibbles.... and the bottle of wine. Well it would have been rude not to drink the entire bottle. We also finished off the tapas (choroizo... mmm mmm) and dug into a Russian Salad too! Stunning!! A bottle of lovely red wine and three plates of Tapas for 25E! Brilliant!

After the Palace we took a leisurely walk back up the road outside and through the park, Jardine de Sabatine, where M posed for a wonderful photo series we are calling "Kings (and One Queen)". Perhaps it was the wine that helped?!

One last place on our whistlestop tour was the Temple of Debod. This is a real ancient Egyptian monument in the heart of Madrid. I really enjoyed it here as we were losing the light which made it perfect for taking photos. I spent ages playing with a slow shutter speed to get that water silky smooth, and admittedly we made little ripples in the water to get a good shot. I'm really proud of them!

The temperature really dropped while we were at The Temple of Debod and it was around 7pm so we decided to head back to our hotel, have a little chill out time and then find a local restaurant for dinner. We arrived back at around 8ish and M got comfy. Very comfy... he finally woke up about half ten and, although the local restaurants were open until midnight and 1am repectively, none of us could be bothered to move after a long day's exploring!

Instead we did some reading about what we are going to do tomorrow, attempted (and failed) to get a VPN working to watch Jericho on ITV player (I will watch it tomorrow on a streaming site instead... Hans Matheson... mmm mmm!) and, at M's request, another couple of episodes of Dr Quinn!! Brilliant.



You may be wondering what on earth the title for today's blog is all about. Well M and I both have our netbooks with us, both running Linux. Both have Android (Linux) phones and I have my Nexus 7 tablet and watch, both Android (Linux). Safe to say we're not really Windows fans. Sadly this took a physical turn and we are now in a room across the hall because we attempted to open the window in our room to let some air in just before bed... it let loads of air in and wouldn't close!! Bit of a disaster but we were moved swiftly and now settled down to sleep. Windows and Linux fans do not mix! ;)

Lots of things planned for tomorrow and a very late night thanks to Window Gate(s) (see what I did there?!).

Hasta Manana!

Photosphere of the Palace grounds

Photoshpehre inside the Palace, amazing ceiling!!

Day 10 - Fuelled Entirely by Irn Bru

Wow it has taken ages to sort this out! Google Photos has stopped accepting DNG files (the raw format my camera shoots in) and of course I didn't realise this at first so I'm like "upload my 176 photos", Google skipps them all so I tired again... three times,then again on another PC then eventually had to convert them all to PNG files and they finally finished uploading and being edited earlier.... yes I ahve SERIOUSLY slow internet so 176 photos took about 10 hours to upload :(

Anyways... onto Day 10!!

Skye Landscape

Dunvegan Castle

The aim of today was to get out and experience as much of the tourist crap that Skye had to offer as possible! Being big fans of Peatbog Faeries we were really hoping to visit Dunvegan as they have two songs about it (Welcome To Dun Vegas and the Veganites) as well as Angus MacAskill's house (they also do a song called Angus MacAskill). We saw on Google that Dunvegan had a caslte, and who are we to pass up a trip to a caslte?!
So off we went, the landscape of Skye is odd, The Old Man and The Old Lady really like Skye, but I've got to say it looked a bit bleak and depressing. I'm sure it's different in the sunshine, but by this point in the holiday I'd forgotten what sunshine and being warm and dry were!
Dunvegan Castle was nice. It's home to the seat of the MacLeod of MacLeod, chief of the Clan MacLeod. It was really cool to see so many artifacts from the castle's history in the rooms, some of which dated back to the 15th Century. I really liked the maid's room as there was quite a bit of chipped and decayed looking stuff there... I love a good bit of rust!!

Doggies lording it up at Dunvegan Castle

Only one of us could go in at a time, though, and we couldn't take any pictures so you'll have to suffice seeing pictures of the outside and of my handsome doggy and his best mate Princess! :)


We got to wander around the gardens with the doggies though and they loved it! The castle had the round garden, the water garden and the walled garden. It also backed onto the beach but the weather wasn't really good enough to go paddling!

Garden Waterfall

The walled garden was nice and had a vegetable patch that looked like it was doing better than ours, as well as loads of other plants. The water garden was lovely and had one of Skye's many MANY pretty waterfalls, still not convinced a waterfall can be ugly?

Getting to try out that slow shutter camera technique is good fun. I can honestly say I think I've just about got the hang of this whole small f/stop means more light, slower speed means more light and blurry. Still not sure what ISO is though, even though I've read about it and Wiki'd it... think I need it explaining in simple person's language.

Off we go to the next thing on our list: Angus Macaskill's House. Angus was a 7ft 9in gentle giant born in Scotland who moved to Canada. I'm not entirely sure why there is a museum dedicated to him on Skye, other than one of his distant relatives, Danny MacAskill, is form Skye and is a famous cyclist.

Angus Macaskill's House

 The museum was really nice though and is in one of the traditional black houses, so if anything it was really interesting to see inside one of the traditional dwellings. There were also lots of artefacts from the Victorian era that were out for display. It's great when a museum lets you get up close to things in such a way and doesn't hide them behind cabinets, this is my favourite type of museum, an immersive experience!

A Gentle Giant

 We moved on from the Angus MacAskill museum to find the Skye Museum of Island Life. This looked interesting on Trip Advisor and was again set in a traditonal 'blackhouse'. We had learnt about Blackhouses from our strip around the museum at Bettyhill in the highlands, so it was cool to be able to go in and have a look around

This museum was really small, and the main thing that annoyed me was there was stuff on the walls that were reprints of newspaper clippings, but the edges had faded so badly you couldn't read them, bugged me a lot that did!

Skye Black House

I really found being inside one of the blackhouses quite depressing if I'm honest. Not because it was a rubbish exhibit, far from it, but because it was quite shocking to be up and close to the sights and smells of traditional island life. The house was black on the outside, as well as the inside, from the soot from burning peat. This was evident because the smell was still lingering! Apparently the thatch is redone every year in the traditional way with rushes being hand cut. All in all a very interesting half an hour!

Museum of Island Life

Our busy action-packed day wasn't about to end there and we moved onto the next place on my list to visit: Neist Point.

The End Of Skye

Neist Point is a viewpoint and is located on the most Westernly part of Skye. This was also the most Westernly coast we would get on this trip! The viewpoint was amazing, really rather amazing!! As usual for this trip it was way too windy and rainy to get HARVe up again, so sadly I don't have any really cool aerial shots, but I got plenty of pictures of the rocks and cliffs.

Thistle! When in Scotland...

Ears Flapping In The Wind

There was even a couple getting married near the point (which we didn't climb, Teapot couldn't be bothered!) which was lovely. Good on them... poor sods must have been freezing!!! I did hold Prince up for a show of love and affection, his little ears were flapping in the wind... I still don't think he's forgiven me completely yet!!

Someone is unimpressed with Neist Point

Next stop: The Fairy Pools. Now I'll admit my little post card addiction had lead me here because I picked up a Fairy Pools post card and it looked stunning!! It looked like a set of pools with almost coloured water in them making them appear magical, so we were hopeful for this one!!

The Fairy Pools

Sadly, what we got was much less "enchanting and magical" and more "encouraging pneumonia".

The Fairy Pools are located along the road to Glen Brittle and is apparently a 30-odd mile walk into the Glen. Along the way there are hundreds of little waterfalls and pools that ahve been created naturally that I'm sure the less cynical of you readers will think is really cute and magical.

"I'll fill up our water-to-go bottles" she said
"It's good fresh water" she said
"It will taste NICE" she said.
Horrible.

Please don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the walk and it WAS very pretty... but this is Scotland. Moreover, this is The Isle of Skye, to say a waterfall is a rare thing is to tell a big fat lie. There's loads of them ll over the island and I'm sure they're all jsut as pretty.

Actually, if I'm honest, I probably would have enjoyed the Fairy Pools a lot more if it wasn't RAINING YET AGAIN!! Really bored of rain and being cold and being damp right now. Oh and did I mention that "headache" I was suffering from a few days ago has turned into a huge lovely cold. Chesty phlegmy cough mixed with the shivers and snotty nose. Just what you want when you're camping in SCOTLAND which is COLD and DAMP!!! Also didn't help that the water we filled up our water-to-go bottles with from the Fairy Pools tasted disgusting. Wouldn't recommend it.

Hundreds of Waterfalls

Dinner time looms and we've got a few choices, wither go into Portree again and try to find a cafe with a seating area outside, get something to cook from the Co-Op in Portree, or forget Portree all together and drive a stupid amount of time in the wrong direction away from our campsite in search of something that resembles Scottish seafood. Guess what one we picked?

We stopped off in a place called Cafesia, hoping for atleast a vaguely filling dinner. So far I've not managed to sample much famous Scottish seafood and have been disappointed with bloody Bookers Basics scampi from the "famous" Portree fish & chips shop, so something filling was all I was hoping for.

Wow did I underestimate this place!! I'm pleased too, this was one of the highlights of my trip!! I went into the little coffee shop to order while Teapot was outside with Prince and Princess, it was really packed (AND WARM!!!!) but the staff were SO nice and friendly. I ordered the sides (Sweet Potato Chips, Haggis Balls with Spicy Mango Dip & Doughballs) and our pizza (local Scottish Seafood Pizza!) and she said it would be a 45 minute wait for the pizza so they would send our sides out as starters.

Sweet Potato chips, Doughballs,
Haggis Balls with Spicey Mango Dip

Am I glad they did, the sides were literally to die for and the pizza was well worth the wait. Honestly, it was the best damn dinner i had for the whole journey and I'd go back to Skye just for that cafe, despite the fact that it was about 15 miles away from our campsite in the wrong direction!!!

As much as I'm moaning a bit today, and that's mainly down to the fact that I felt like shit all day and was really REALLY fed up with being cold and damp, I did enjoy the whistle stop tour of The Island, I just felt that it seemed like Blackpool end of season. Kind of like it needed a good lick of paint and some maintenance, everything looked a bit tired and half arsed. I know it was raining and cold, but  even Portree and Dunvegan looked like they were about to fall down.

Delicious Seafood Pizza

I guess I'm not not a natural lover of The Isle of Skye to be honest and I probably wont bother coming back in a hurry. There were nice bits, just not enough to make me fall in love with it.

Tomorrow's plan: Leave Skye (can't say I'm overly upset about that) and travel down to Loch Lomond via Glencoe,