Madrid and Barcelona May '04

Our two weeks in Spain got off to the usual bad start compliments of Thai Airways. Flew first class, which means they must torture customers in economy to justify the first class premium fare. Flight was packed through Rome, then empty for the final Rome to Madrid leg, but overall about a fifteen hour flight, and no movies, which I think is a record, even for Thai.

We're staying at the Ritz in Madrid for about ten days, then spending a few days in Barcelona. The Ritz was opened one hundred years ago when the Spanish king needed someplace suitably grand to house the guests for his upcoming wedding. It has had a fairly stuffy reputation since then, probably since it barred celebrities, bullfighters, men without ties and women without dresses from the hotel until about twenty years ago. But the driver who brought us to the hotel had just dropped Lenny Kravitz off there, so it must have loosened up considerably.

The lobby photographs well, but is unimpressive, far too cramped to be grand. The exterior is nice though, and the location across from the Prado museum is very convenient. And there's a great garden in back for drinks and dinner in good weather, but unfortunately the weather pretty much sucked for most of the trip.