Museo Nacional Del Prado
With a flight out of Madrid in the late afternoon, we were able to fit in a quick but satisfactory, somewhat-guided tour of the #Prado before heading to the #airport to begin our trip home. (450 characters before cut off).
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Intro sentence or two linking back to the previous post in this series.
The Prado National Museum (name?)
Since we knew from #retiroparkDay1 that the Prado would be a bit of a hike since it sits just west of the park, and there really aren't any convenient metro stops, we caught a cab for about 8€. Along the way, we passed some large sporting event setting up for later in the day. My Spanish isn't that great, but what we gleaned from the cabbie was that the road between our hotel and the Prado would be closed later in the day. Good to know.
We arrive at the Prado around 10?am and briefly waited in line to buy tickets. You can avoid that by buying them online at www.museodelprado.es The beautiful fall weather of the last few days had turned brisk today, but the fall leaves still made for a beautiful wait.
We followed a "See Prado in 45 minutes" guide we found while waiting for the tickets.https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/travel/14culture.html It worked quite well, and we had a little more time to see some of the masterpieces listed on the museum guide.
Here's the Museum's guide, so you can see what masterpieces are in which room, and it works well with the 45-minute tour referenced above.
Our kids were getting antsy, so we caught a cab back to the hotel. But it had to go the long way since many of the city center streets were now blocked. Grabbed our bags from the hotel, then headed to the Metro.
Airport Fun
Metro to airport: had to buy a one way trip to the airport because the multi card only allowed adding 10 trips at a time.changed from line 10 to 8, some kind of delay.
Exiting airport, had to pay exit fee of 3 euros each on the non-airport card. Foresaw this, but surprised to learn that you can only add two fees max to the card.
Check in- problems with the folks in front of us. Then some unnecessary questions over visas. Problems printing our boarding passes. Then one of our bags was 1+ kg over weight, repacked a bit at the counter, shade of #pamukkale. Boarding passes finally printed, headed to security.
Down the escalators, an airport employee was directing everyone to our right, even though the signs only indicated that was correct for T1 &T3. But she confirmed that people headed to T2 had to not follow the signs.
At security, there were two x-ray machines. Exery was lined up and loaded on the left, then we all had to switch over to the right. And then, as if looking diligently to find the last straw, the small, sealed bottle of water we'd brought from the hotel (and forgotten duringthe previous ridiculousness had to be thrown out. We could even drink it in front of them. I think that Madrid may be trying to give #Pisa a run for their money for worst passenger experience.
Fortunately, boarding went as well as could be expected.
The transfer in Athens was a bit more frustrating than it needed to be. IntraSchengen arrivals come in on terminal B, and our extraschengen flight to Cyprus departs from terminal A about an hour after we land. But terminal B is really scarce on signage. Had to go thru security and passport control too. They were boarding when we got to the gate, but we got there. Could have been worse #amman-ist?
And a pleasant surprise, just like #day1 our younger daughter's kindergarten teacher was on our flight again.
« Yesterday: Madrid Wax Museum
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All Trips From Our Assignment to Nicosia, Cyprus
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| Las Meninas by Velázquez |
The Prado National Museum (name?)
Since we knew from #retiroparkDay1 that the Prado would be a bit of a hike since it sits just west of the park, and there really aren't any convenient metro stops, we caught a cab for about 8€. Along the way, we passed some large sporting event setting up for later in the day. My Spanish isn't that great, but what we gleaned from the cabbie was that the road between our hotel and the Prado would be closed later in the day. Good to know.
We arrive at the Prado around 10?am and briefly waited in line to buy tickets. You can avoid that by buying them online at www.museodelprado.es The beautiful fall weather of the last few days had turned brisk today, but the fall leaves still made for a beautiful wait.
We followed a "See Prado in 45 minutes" guide we found while waiting for the tickets.https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/travel/14culture.html It worked quite well, and we had a little more time to see some of the masterpieces listed on the museum guide.
 |
| The Annunciation by Fra Angelico |
 |
| Knight with his hand on his chest by El Greco |
Our kids were getting antsy, so we caught a cab back to the hotel. But it had to go the long way since many of the city center streets were now blocked. Grabbed our bags from the hotel, then headed to the Metro.
Airport Fun
Metro to airport: had to buy a one way trip to the airport because the multi card only allowed adding 10 trips at a time.changed from line 10 to 8, some kind of delay.
Exiting airport, had to pay exit fee of 3 euros each on the non-airport card. Foresaw this, but surprised to learn that you can only add two fees max to the card.
Check in- problems with the folks in front of us. Then some unnecessary questions over visas. Problems printing our boarding passes. Then one of our bags was 1+ kg over weight, repacked a bit at the counter, shade of #pamukkale. Boarding passes finally printed, headed to security.
Down the escalators, an airport employee was directing everyone to our right, even though the signs only indicated that was correct for T1 &T3. But she confirmed that people headed to T2 had to not follow the signs.
At security, there were two x-ray machines. Exery was lined up and loaded on the left, then we all had to switch over to the right. And then, as if looking diligently to find the last straw, the small, sealed bottle of water we'd brought from the hotel (and forgotten duringthe previous ridiculousness had to be thrown out. We could even drink it in front of them. I think that Madrid may be trying to give #Pisa a run for their money for worst passenger experience.
Fortunately, boarding went as well as could be expected.
The transfer in Athens was a bit more frustrating than it needed to be. IntraSchengen arrivals come in on terminal B, and our extraschengen flight to Cyprus departs from terminal A about an hour after we land. But terminal B is really scarce on signage. Had to go thru security and passport control too. They were boarding when we got to the gate, but we got there. Could have been worse #amman-ist?
And a pleasant surprise, just like #day1 our younger daughter's kindergarten teacher was on our flight again.
◆
All Trips From Our Assignment to Nicosia, Cyprus
◆
All Trip Summaries
You May Also Like:
- Copy from Google Docs
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