This is a great city. I was underwhelmed by Lisbon, but Madrid has been everything I look for in a city: spacious parks, nice museums and monuments, inexpensive yet delicious coffee and pleasant streets for walking. Spain has several distinctive regions and it has been great to explore Catalonia, Andalucia and now the capital city.

The museums cost 15 € each, but they are free for two hours each evening and violinists play Despacito and Mozart for us freeloaders in line. The curators discourage photographs of the artwork, but we didn’t know until after we took these.

We planned our days to enjoy gardens in the morning, read in the afternoon and visit museums in the evening. The parks and gardens here are beautiful, expansive and varied. Retiro Park captivated us so much that we returned to it all four days.

The park even had a body weight circuit set up and we got in a workout. We have been walking a ton, but my other muscles are disintegrating so it felt good to put them to use. The next day everything was sore.

Our Airbnb had a host kitty, and we caught up on two weeks of laundry.