The Rain In Spain ... Some Things I Should Explain (Pre-Trip Report)

[Gill H]

As you may know, we are Peter H and Gill H, veteran Dibbers and voyagers.

I write the trippies, Peter does the videos, and so far our Dibb reports have included several DLP trips, a memorable if chilly visit to WDW in December 2010, and trips to Treviso in Italy and Dusseldorf in Germany. So as you can see, we like to explore!

The idea for this particular trip started back in December, when we began to think about booking a trip to DLP around Peter’s birthday in March. His birthday is 7 March, and the weekend after that is the St David’s Welsh Festival at DLP. Now as a Welsh girl in exile, this is something I would love to see, so we did a bit of pricing up. However, there were no decent offers around at the time, and all the budget hotels seemed to be full already; added to that, we realised that we would hit Paris school holidays. Now, Rule 1 of DLP is ‘avoid weekends’ and Rule 2 is ‘avoid local school holidays’ so we decided to give it a miss this time.

(Don’t worry – we later managed a sneaky last-minute trip in January see here for details!)

The Hothersalls. An Unexpected Journey: The Compendium

The Hothersalls. An Unexpected Journey: The Box Set

So we started checking out various other possibilities on Expedia, and eventually found a really good deal for Madrid. Neither of us had ever been to Spain, but we had always said we would like to do a Spanish city one day. We’re not beach people, and we have no interest in Costal Del Egg’n’Chips type holidays, but a few days exploring a city is right up our Boulevard, Strasse or in this case Via.
Flights from Heathrow and 3 nights in the Hotel Atlantico on the Gran Via came in at just over £500 in total, which we thought was pretty good. The hotel was 4 star and had great reviews, and we could see that the location was very central.

So before the end of the year we had the trip booked, a Madrid guidebook purchased, and a ‘teach yourself Spanish’ app downloaded to the phone. All that was left was to do a bit of research.

We had a look on Lovefilm for travel guides and found one which was rather cheesy (aren’t they all) but gave us a good overview of some of the beautiful buildings and locations we wanted to see. We also looked up some YouTube videos, particularly travel guides by a US presenter called Rick Steves, which showed us some nice foods to try – always a highlight of our trips.

The other staple of a Peter & Gill H trip is entertainment. We usually go to the theatre - we’ve seen shows in France and Germany despite only having rusty 30-year old school French and German. But Spain seemed to be a bit different. For a start, we knew no Spanish whatsoever, so chances of following what was going on were a bit limited. Also, the Spanish day ends a lot later than ours (as we discovered once at DLP when we tried to have a quiet meal in a restaurant at 9.30 pm, only to find it full of excited Spanish children!) Shows seemed to start at 10pm or even later in Madrid, and we weren’t sure we’d be awake by the end.

So we looked at more traditional local entertainment options instead, and decided to book a flamenco show. The most famous and well-regarded seemed to be La Corral de Moreria; there was an option for dinner and the show which could be booked through Expedia, and so my parents paid for this as Peter’s birthday present.

And from there it all goes a bit quiet until Day 1, so until then, adios amigos!

>>Day 1

INDEX

[DIBBadmin]

This thread has been automatically closed as it has not been posted on in 365 days.