Yesterday was a travel day. Even when flying within Europe, travel seems to eat up the entire day, and that was the case here. Flying through Frankfurt is always a bit of an “adventure” but everything went smoothly and we arrived in Madrid right on time.

Today we took it easy with a late start and a quiet morning walking in the neighborhood around our hotel.

After a late lunch (delicious and very reasonably priced) we took the Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour around historic Madrid, just to get a feel for things. After taking the full route, we got off at the Botanical Gardens. It’s late fall, so there wasn’t that much to see, but it was still lovely and the quiet was just what we needed after the noise and bustle of the city.

We’re having a little down time now, and later we’ll head out for tapas and cava.