I was now heading towards Santander to catch my ferry which was going to depart from Spain in three days. My plan was to spend the last days on the beach in Santander.

But as I was heading north I started recapitulating the past weeks spent on the road and realized that there was much that could be done in two full days. I had seen everything and much more than I hoped to see on this trip. The only thing I thought I was going to skip on was seeing Madrid. It was just too awkwardly placed right in the centre of Spain. Just didn’t fit into any route. But here I was with two full days of extra time. So I stopped on the side of the empty road, updated my GPS target and turned around heading south for Madrid.

 

Since I was heading for the heart of Madrid I was expecting the sun to pop up any second the further I got south. On the contrary though it got colder and colder and for the very first time on my Spain trip it even started to rain. Just when it had stopped raining I was back climbing hills reaching fog so saturated I got more wet from it than from the rain minutes ago. On the sides of the road tall snow measurement poles started to appear.

It almost seemed to me like I was going to end up climbing another one of those “shortcut” roads. But luckily that wasn’t the case and eventually the scenery and weather changed to what I was expecting to see in this area.

Except for that unreal Armageddon back lit rain that I encountered all the way down to Madrid.

400km later I arrived in Madrid when the sun had just set. I had booked a nice hostel which like so many other hostels offered free walking tours every other day. Exhausted I went to bed curious about seeing the city the next day.

A group of 15 people we walked through the city at almost 40 degrees Celsius learning about Spainsh history which is closely tied to Austrias history. Even the palace of the Spanish side of the Austrian Habsburg Family that ruled both countries at that time looks very much like the one they had built in Austria.

The architecture in Madrid was nice but not as impressive as other places I had seen on this trip.

Part of the reason for that is that at the time these buildings were constructed (Baroque/Classicism) it was frowned upon in Madrid to show wealth in architecture. The inside of these buildings were incredibly pompous but the outside was supposed to be as bland as possible.

A friend of mine had told me that Madrid wasn’t going to be too interesting compared to all the other sights the country had to offer and after having seen it I agree. Though there were a few museums I wanted to visit I ended up just walking through the city and relaxing at the hostel after the strenuous past days.