October 2011
On 9th October 2011 I ran the Liverpool marathon. The first marathon in I think 23 years. My time was 5 hours and 24 minutes. The next day we were on the train to Paris for a Refuges des Fondu special and then to Madrid to relax. In planning this trip I forgot that I wouldn’t be able to walk after the marathon so someday we hope to revisit Madrid.
We arrived late the previous night to the sight of a man in speedos holding a sign in the Plaza del Sol. The sign read;
Respect this man who has to undress to live
No idea why and the police left him alone.
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Our first full day in Madrid was spent on an open tour bus. It was a great way to see the city and not something we would normally do. I prefer to wander and stop to take photos. Hard to do that on a bus but it’s hard to wander after running a marathon so you take what you can get. We took the extended tour which took us to where Madrid had turned a motorway into a river and public park area. Great! I need to explore that next time.
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The city is beautiful. I love the pastel colours and the architecture is pristine. We stayed in a nice enough hotel just off Plaza del Sol which certainly lived up to its name. It was a very hot day so I bought a Buff. One of those neckerchiefs bikers wear but the instructions showed how to make it into a head covering to protect me from the heat.
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As I couldn’t walk much food was whatever we bumped into. We didn’t find an amazing restaurant or have a life changing food experience like I did in Paris the previous year. If you ignore the churros that is. I’ll get to them in a future post.
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