Europe 2021: Madrid Part 2

Europe 2021:

Madrid Part 2

Plaza Mayor

Madrid is a vibrant city, and the hub (both figuratively and geographically) of Spain. We spent a few days exploring some, but certainly not all, of what it had to offer. Here are a few highlights.

El Retiro Park

El Retiro Park is a delightful green space in the heart of Madrid. It's right next to a number of museums, including the Prado, and makes for a relaxing place to get away from the crowds and concrete. We spent some time walking around and also rented one of the little rowboats they have on a lake in the middle of the park.

Monument to Alfonso XII

The Prado

The Prado is the National Art Museum of Spain. It's a fine facility with one of the great collections of European art in the world. If you like art museums, you're going to want to go to this one for sure. If you don't you could probably skip it. It's a basic art museum - paintings on the wall and not much else. 

Lunch - They used to have a charming café on-site, but now it's more of a cafeteria style set up. 

Sobrino de Botin

There is no shortage of great dining options in Spain, but Botin has the distinction of being the oldest restaurant in the world in continuous operation as it has been serving the specialty of suckling pig (and other things) since 1725! We made reservations before our trip to insure we would have the opportunity to try it out. 

It's located just outside of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid Centro.

 

Misc

Nel Nav Day

On every one of these trips, we usually end up having a Nel Nav Day - basically a day where Nel takes over the navigation duties. I like it. I just get to follow along with no thought and enjoy whatever fate has in store for me. 

Even in the most remote of places, much less a major European city like Madrid, you will find eating options that you have back home - in this case, Five Guys. We follow a rule when we travel of not eating anywhere that we can get in H-Town. It's a guideline more than a rule really, but we usually follow it. 

After spending a few days in Madrid, we headed to Plaza de Espana to pick up our rental car for the next couple of weeks. I usually book with Avis, but on this occasion I opted for Enterprise because our company has a new contract with them and they had an office that was very near our apartment. 

I had booked a car in the Luxury class and was willing to take my chances (with Avis, I just pick whatever car I want that they have). When I walked in the lady had some bad news for me:

Her: "There's a problem. We don't have anything that is automatic." 

Me: "That's no issue at all. Just give me something cool." 

Her: "We don't have anything cool either." 😒

In fact, they only had one vehicle available at the entire facility, and nothing available at the airport. We had no choice but to take it or try to find other options and delay our departure further. We chose to go with it and get out of town.

It's a Caddy! - a Volkswagen Caddy. They call it a 'leisure activity vehicle', whatever that means. It's horrible to drive and extremely under-powered, but it did have plenty of room for our stuff and it was unlikely anyone we know would actually see us. 

Europe 2021: Madrid Part 1

Europe 2021:

Madrid Part 1

The response to COVID-19 has put a real damper on travel over the last couple of years, but Branelle and I were determined to go somewhere this fall. Our original plan was Malaysia-Indonesia-Singapore, but those countries never opened up like they indicated they might. We decided to just go to whatever place had the least number of COVID rules in place so we could actually enjoy ourselves. Spain jumped to the top of the list, and we added Portugal, Andorra, and even Gibraltar in for good measure because once you're on the ground in Europe you can go pretty much anywhere you want. Spain required no testing - no anything really - to fly in, and while a lot of the citizens did wear masks, they weren't required outdoors or in most places indoors outside of the major cities.

Air travel in the COVID era sucks, it just does. It wasn't great before, but it's much worse now. A lot of it depends on location, airline, and even flight crews. The lounges in blue states are almost always closed (not necessarily the case in red states) and every airline has different interpretations of what they are supposed to impose on passengers. The mask requirement has got to go, and it's going to take a national election to make that happen so expect it to stay around until 2022 at least.

We were unfortunate to get a plane with the old version of United's Polaris Class seats. The new versions are much better, but it's out of your control when you book to a degree. We flew from Houston to Newark and then on to Madrid, so the overnight flight was only like eight hours.

We were going to be in Madrid for a few days so we rented an apartment in the Centro District. We got one on a pedestrian only street that was about 100 meters from the Puerta del Sol and right next to the Plaza Mayor, which is the vibrant center of Madrid and where you want to be when visiting as a tourist. It was great and the folks that ran the building were extremely helpful. We arrived in the morning way before we were allowed to check in and the guy got on the subway and headed over to let us in.

We walked down the street for breakfast, which apparently in Spain consists of Churros dipped in cups of chocolate. It was very popular and about the only time we had to wait for a table during our trip.

When heading to Europe from the states, I've found that the best way to beat jet lag is to just push through the first day (don't be too ambitious though) until the evening and then crash. I always wake up fine and synced the next morning. We decided to walk down to the Royal Palace after we got settled.

My mother has told Branelle a story of me visiting the Royal Palace as a boy and driving my little Hot Wheels car over the ropes like a racetrack during the entire tour. I humored Nel by pretending to do the same...sans car unfortunately. 

Nel, as always, amused by people asking me to take pictures of them. I must just look approachable. 

Masks were required in most government buildings in Spain. It was annoying, but not unexpected. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing and eating. Again, don't want to get too ambitious on arrival day. Nel faded fast in the evening as one should. I didn't, surprisingly, but made the best of the free time by getting some work done. 

I also found that on this trip Branelle developed an obsession with ham croquets. I like them, which is good news because she ordered them at just about every meal, but I was getting sick of them by about week two.

Mecum Kissimmee 2021 Report

 Mecum Kissimmee 2021 Report

I'm on a roll so I'm going to knock another one out. We headed to the Mecum auction in Kissimmee for the first time earlier this year. It's one of the biggest car auctions out there, spanning 10 days and moving thousands of cars. I was curious and excited to get to another new venue for us. 

I'll start by stating the obvious - it's big. Probably too big. Unlike Houston and other venues where everything is under one roof, this is spread out over the expanse of the Osceola Heritage Park. The cars are all outside - some of them under tents - and in some cases a solid 5 minute walk away from the arena where the auction is taking place. If you're someone like me that likes to really look at the cars during the auction, this isn't ideal.

This map shows the grounds and the 23 different places where cars could be located. Another issue is that since the auction covers 10 days, not everyone brought their cars before the auction started. I found this to be confusing and unfortunate. We attended the first few days of the auction but flew home before the last days where I became an online bidder. There were cars I might have been interested in going later that I just didn't get a chance to inspect before we left.

I didn't love the set up either. They hold the actual auction in the arena - it's the only option really. They had tables set up on the floor, but with so many people in attendance there was no way to get a table unless you came early and never left it. Nel and I had to park in the stands when we wanted to watch and bid.

One thing that was much better than Houston was the food. The whole place had a sort of street fair vibe with stages and food trucks, etc. 

One thing that was just as annoying as Houston was the mask requirements. Florida, like Texas, had lifted most mask requirements, but like Harris County in Texas, there were still blue pockets of defiance that the state hadn't figured out yet how to control. Orlando was one of those. The good news was that the Mecum folks couldn't care less if you wore a mask or not so it was just police and county officials you had to watch for.

Having struck out in Houston just a month earlier, and eager to add some toys and willing to spend a lot of money doing it, I was sure I was coming home with many things. It didn't happen. I don't know why I struck out again. There was certainly something for everyone, and while the prices were high, there were deals to be had if you looked close enough.

It wasn't a complete loss. We were able to catch up with our friends Dave and Becky for dinner. We still talk to them in spite of that fact that they're traitors for leaving Texas. (I mean, who leaves Texas - seriously!?!) 

I'm not going to do the usual "things we didn't buy" thing this time because I'm still three auctions behind - just some pictures.

An entire collection of giant American land yachts! I am very excited.

Nel wanted me to buy this limo van for her running team. That was a no.

The "good stuff" was generally in the enclosed tents closer to the arena.

Loved this classic square body Suburban, but we have one of these in the garage already back home.

A replica of the Le Mans winning Ford GT40. Not sure I'd fit in it but thought about it all the same.