Today was another lovely day with the temperature somewhere around 23° C

Well we decided to venture out and go to the museum + cathedral today via a long winded path to find some breakfast.

Pam found a place for us to visit but by the time we were on our way neither of us knew its name or real location. So we headed off in the general location but failed to find it.

We found a little boulevard with some windmills on it, most were in a bad state but one looked mostly intact. Along a bit further we stopped at a place that was just opening, they had no customers and no menu but we ordered a coffee each. It was very pleasant to just sit and watch the world go on - an espresso was 1.20 euro.

This rather broken wind mill was above where we had our coffees. 

After the coffee break we headed to the cathedral but we decided to go back to the cafe from yesterday and have some more sangria before doing the tour of the cathedral.

This time a 1liter jug for 13.50 EURO

Pam enjoying the Sangria and the view out of the door from our table.

We woke up but slacked around until 10am and then went for a walk to see the Cathedral

The view up to the Cathedral

The view from the Cathedral

We walked around the Cathedral but the doors were all closed. We found an entrance to the Museum and Cathedral but they wanted 7 Euro each and we just wanted the Cathedral so we decided not to visit. I checked up later and this is the only option to see the Cathedral so we may do it another day.

We stopped at a little shop for coffee

We then decided to have a little jug of Sangria which was very nice. 9.50 EURO

After a bit of a rest we went out to find some dinner and did not really know what we were looking for but basically something Spanish.

There is a lot of western/asian food places here probably due to a lot of British people who visit here. Places like Hard Rock, Irish pubs, Thai & Indian places.

We walked around and checked out a few places but decided on a place (see below - I can't remember its name)

A flat bread with octopus and red pepper - 6.50 Euro - it was a bit dry...
  

A Tuna Salad - 13.50 EURO

A few wines for Chris and beers for Pam and we were good....

We woke up to day knowing we had to fly to Palma, Mallorca this after noon - we needed to work out how to get from the airport to our hotel.

So I did a google search and found a huge issue occurred only 16 hours before with 1000's of people waiting for immigration queues of 2 hours or more. (I think this is normal in the US)

We were therefore concerned that we may be affected by this delay as well but luckily we were not at all.

We started the day looking for the Spanish favorite called Churro De Chocolate

The chocolate was pretty crappy as it was just from a packet, mixed with milk in a frothing machine like a coffee maker. A real chocolate shop would be a different experience. Oh Well not to worry we may find somewhere in Barcelona to try the proper dish.

We took a taxi from the hotel to the airport at a fixed price of 30 EURO. Checked in and got our boarding passes and headed through security. We decided to have a beer while we waited for our flight. 

Large pint of beer for 3.40 EURO each - quite good value for an airport.

We are booked on Norwegian Airlines to Palma and this is a cut price airline so no frills.

Our flight is only an hour so we did not need any drinks etc but the airline did offer free internet on the aircraft. It was quite strange and good to browse the web and check emails while flying. This is definitely the way of the future.

We arrived at Palma and after a considerable walk of probably 1 KM we were out and went to find the bus to the take us near the hotel.

We went to the right area where the bus was and we found that there was a machine that was supposed to give you your ticket. The instructions looked odd and it seemed very difficult to use. We were not sure if we could just pay the driver. A bus then turned up and people got on board and most had some type of card and a sign on the bus said the fare was 5 Euro whereas online it says 1.85 Euro.

We flagged this and caught a taxi for 20.50 Euro right to the hotel door in 15 minutes. The bus would have stopped 14 times and taken more than an hour so this seemed like a good option.

We have a great room with a fabulous view over the yachts in the harbor.

On our second morning we decided to go to the Reini Sofia - so we caught a cab from the hotel to the location for 6 Euro.

We got there about 10:15am and there was a huge queue already. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes 1/2 of the queue walked off - we did not know why so we joined the normal queue. It took about 80 minutes to get a ticket. Quite stupid really as we could have just bought a ticket while waiting inline on the phone and then got in earlier.

 So we got our ticket at about 12:10pm and we could not go into the Picasso part of the museum until 2:45 (fixed entry time). So we accepted this - I checked online and online we could have bought it right them and had entry at 2pm to Picasso. Oh well we will learn from begin stupid and not pre-booking.

The museum seemed to be quite happy with people taking photos except in the Picasso exibition.

Our second night in Madrid and we had booked into Botin - this restaurant is registered in the Guinness book of Records as the oldest restaurant in the world. It is not necessarily the oldest, but it is the oldest continually running without closing at the same location.

We had booked in for 10pm which sounds very late but it worked out fine for us as it gave us time to rest before going out.

Pam enjoying her self....

Obviously Chris with another glass of wine.

The house specialty - the suckling pig cooked in the original oven - The pigs are from the Segovia region.

Poor wee piggy - these can not be very old.

The original oven that the pigs are cooked in is from 1700s

It was a very nice dish and was priced at about 24 Euro. 

We head out for dinner after a rest and find the main Grand Via too busy with people everywhere so we decide to drop back a couple of blocks and find a little bar with only 3 people in it.

We have a red wine and a beer and only stay for a 20 minutes as it is a bit quiet and we wanted to find something a little more lively.

We walk down the street a bit further and find a little place called Cafe De La Luz

We ordered a couple of simple dishes - Smoked Sardines with Gazpacho and Beef Carparcio with Arugula and shaved Parmesan.

After dinner we had another drink and relaxed at a little table near the door.

We decided to head back to our hotel and finish the night with a drink in the roof terrace. The streets still packed with people.

The hotel was quite fancy with a nice lounge along with art works and sculptures around the walls.

The root terrace allowed for nice views around the Gran Via.

We arrived at our hotel called Hotel Atlantico which is situated at Gran Via 38

It is a nice hotel - we are given an upgrade from our standard room to a superior room which was nice. The Superior room has a great bathroom with a wicked shower.

We go out to check out the area as it is still early and we need to get ourselves into the time zone. Even though it is after 10am there are still a lot of shops not open and locked up.

We head to the Puesta Del Sol which is only 5-10 minutes away and when we get there it reminds us a little of Time Square in New York with people dressed up in costumes looking for photo opportunities.

It was heavily policed as is most of the areas we have seen in Madrid which is good - although some of them have rather large rifles with the finder on the trigger.

We then head towards the Plaza Mayor which was home to Bull Fights and Executions over the years, but now is mainly filled with people selling crap, especially men from Africa trying to sell Bags, Shoes, and Sun Glasses all the while the 4 corners of their sheet connected to their hands via rope in case they need to make a hasty exit.

There was lots of restaurants there as well but we did not go to any as we thought they would be just overpriced.

We went out a couple of blocks and had a beer at a place called Tea & ????  - we sat outside in a small table and ordered a beer each - quite expensive I thought at 5 Euro for a Paul Lander from Germany 500ml. But find out the outside tables have a 20% margin on top of that so 6 Euro.

Oh well it was nice to sit and watch the world go by for a while.

We left Christchurch quite early on Wednesday morning - about 7am - using an Uber as it is so much better priced than a taxi. The Uber turned up in a few minutes with a driver who did not really speak a word at all during the whole trip to the airport in the rain. It was cheap enough at about NZD 37.

We arrived at the airport just after 7:30am and dropped our bags into the drop off area - checked in the whole way to Madrid and went to find the Koru lounge as I had a few vouchers we could use.

My ticket was fine but Pam's did not register as it would not as the vouchers are associated with my account. The lady sorted it out, and it looks like I was only charged for my pass. As I still have 3 of the 4 lounge passes available. Maybe it will change but that is fine.

A simple 1 hour 20 minute flight to Auckland. It was absolutely pissing down when we got there so there was no way we would be walking to the International terminal.

The Auckland airport free transfer is very good, but also very badly setup. The location in the domestic terminal is to the left of Door 4 but it is hard work to find that and it is next to something called SKY which is a bus service into the city. There is now at least a sign of sorts of where you are supposed to wait, but no indication of when the next bus will arrive. It is a pity as this service could be so much simpler with not a lot of work by Auckland Airport.

The flight from Auckland to Hong Kong was about 11.5 hours or so  and it went quite quickly.

We flew Cathy Pacific in Economy - the seats were nice, the screen modern and the plane quite new being a Boeing 757.

The food was pretty  poor - the bread roll with the best of the meal. The drinks service although apparently they had all the normal spirits etc was not displayed, or offered. You had to ask for something and assume they had it in their cart. Which they did of course, but you would not know this.

The red wine was a French cab-savignon which was quite nice the first time I tried it, but every other time I tried it the wine was very cold - not what you want in a red wine. A few Cognacs and I was happy.

The first journey was  over and now 4 hours in Hong Kong util our next flight.

We were going to eat some nice Duck dish in the airport but that did not happen as no one was selling duck although there was lots of nice pictures of duck dishes around.

Duty free was expensive in Hong Kong as far as alcohol was concerned with a bottle of Bombay Saffire Gin at 200 HKD about $40 NZD.

I crashed while waiting for our 12:50am flight. At about midnight I woke up and thought I should buy a bottle of Gin - I go to the shop and am told they are shut. 

The flight is delayed a small amount and we all get on and sit down. The food on this flight was worse than the first flight and the bread roll was again the best thing.

There was a small salad of "Defrosted Frozen Vegetables" with "Smoked Salmon" (probably from Norway - worst in the world) with no seasoning, no dressing, just sitting there. Yuk.

The breakfast was just as bad with a noodle dish with no sauce at all so basically just some noodles stuck together. There was however a saving grace of a noodle soup served as a snack sometime during the 14 hour flight.

The flight was very long - I hate 14 hour flights. Just too long and i could never imagine the pain of 18 hour+ flights that are offered these days.

We arrived in Madrid about 9am, went through immigration, found our bags, left the airport in a Taxi to our Hotel, all very easily done. 

We paid a fixed price of 30 EURO for the taxi but we had previously arranged to get this refunded by the hotel as they use to provide this service but stopped doing it after we booked so Pam had arranged for them to refund us.

Madrid is very warm with temperatures hitting 29 on the first day and people everywhere.