One of the great things about football is it is often quite easy to work out where you were a year ago.  Though occasionally you will suddenly realise it was two or three years ago, but that may be age.  So a year ago I was in Rome for the game against AS Roma, hoping to return in May.  That hope was dashed but a year on I find myself in Madrid with a similar hope of returning in May again.  The only certain thing is that it can’t be a return trip to the same ground whatever happens as we were playing Atletico in the Vicente Calderon and the final is in the Bernabeu.

I’d booked this so soon after the draw was made that I had to double check I’d got all the details fixed.  Again I’m off on my own though I know that a couple of my mates will be out there on match day at least.  With a late afternoon flight I do some work at home to try and ensure there won’t be too many emails on my return.  It is then a leisurely trip down to Gatwick South having checked in on line.  They now seem to have decided to tell you gate opening times for every flight in advance but typically Easyjet miss the time and it switches to an old fashioned “please wait”.  But it isn’t delayed by too much and I then have the usual experience of bumping into someone in the process of boarding, this time it is Kevin who I haven’t seen much of recently.  No Mrs K but he has a mate with him who I spend more time talking to as Kevin sleeps for most of the flight.  I’d briefly visited Madrid on my second trip to Valencia in 2007 so I’m familiar with the size of the airport and the long walk to the Metro.  The others are staying further out than me so we go our separate ways as they change on the Metro.  I found my hotel with ease and it is neatly tucked away off one of the main roads, Gran Via.  I’d been told it was in the red light district but this was based on being in the same street as the hotel my mate Andy is staying in which is a quarter of a mile up the road.  It is much nicer where I am.  I go for a wander to familiarise myself with the locale and find a quiet restaurant to eat in and being Spanish they are not in the least bothered by what I consider the late hour.  It is also pleasantly warm for an autumn evening.

The next day is match day and I haven’t made any particular plans.  So I walk in a loop around the city centre covering several of the main plazas and there is a lot less building work going on than on my previous visit so I can see a lot more.  The royal palace is impressively huge but the Plaza Mayor has more style too it.  The strangest sight I see is a garden that is literally on a vertical wall, going up to an impressive height too.  I pop back to the hotel and then start getting text messages as others start arriving from the airport.  Andy has a meeting with an Atletico fan he knows through work so we agree to meet later but I arrange to meet up with Clive.  Whilst waiting in the Plaza Puerta del Sol I watch fascinated as two Japanese tourists take picture after picture, posing with the famous statue of a bear and a tree.  They obviously can’t quite get the pose right as they keep trotting back and forth and retaking similar pictures again and again.  I’d thought Clive would want to see the Prado but as it is a new city for him and a nice sunny day he seems more than happy to wander and look at the sights instead.  We stop for a coffee and experience our first slow service of the day, definitely no rushing going on around here.  We then go down the hill from the palace but find you cannot go into the gardens, at least from that side.  So we go down by the very small river and also explore the refurbished railway station that had looked a bit derelict from first viewing but has obviously had a lot of work done.  It is then back up to the Gran Via and along to the Retiro park.  Andy is still at lunch! 

After a very leisurely stroll with ice cream around the boating lake we decide we should think about eating.  Initially we planned to not go back too central but we couldn’t find anywhere we liked the look of and then struggled to find somewhere both open and serving meals rather than snacks.  By now we’ve decided we won’t see Andy until later as he has a lift arranged.  Ending up right back in the centre I remember finding the restaurant in Barcelona in the El Corte Ingles department store and there is a local one across the road.  So we eventually find it up on the top floor but it doesn’t have any view, unlike Barcelona.  But they’re serving and we get our meal quickly.  Paying is another matter as it has got very busy and our ancient waiter doesn’t seem to see the value of getting us out of there and freeing up a table!  The old dear next to us is patiently waiting to pay too and she only had a coffee.  Eventually I decide we’ll get up and put our coats on to leave and another member of staff appears and tries to explain that we should be in the queue for tables.  He then realises we’re wanting to pay and everything is suddenly sorted without our own waiter even noticing us!

It is now time for the game so it is off to the Metro where we somehow manage to get on the wrong train.  It isn’t the easiest system to navigate but even so we somehow got on the wrong number line in the wrong direction!  It isn’t that crowded and we get off at the stop we’d been advised to go to and the bars outside are full of Chelsea fans.  Having not been given any directions to walk in and being off the edge of our map we end up getting to a road the police don’t want us to go down and have to walk around the block.  Strangely there seem to be just as many Atletico fans at this side of the ground so it seems a bit pointless.  But after a few minutes we are in the ground without any hassle and of course despite the different priced tickets everyone is already sitting wherever they like!  We bump into Scott and Andy who I haven’t seen properly since the last European trip and it turns out we’re in the same hotel.  Also sounds like we’ve missed a bit of trouble outside with the locals throwing bottles and glasses at our fans as they approach the ground.  We hear later that a few fans were set upon and robbed as well.  At the end after being kept in for the usual amount of time it also seems there is a minor altercation with the police on exiting the ground.  But given the trouble some English fans have had in Madrid we do seem to have had relatively little hassle.  We’re allowed to walk back to the Metro and get a train without much supervision.  I go for a drink with Scott and Andy whilst trying to get hold of the other Andy who I eventually have to go out and look for on the Gran Via before he gets lost even more.  It turns into quite a late night but a relatively sedate one, lot of chat but not much more, maybe because everyone else is going back in the morning.

I’m up surprisingly early in the morning with a plan to visit the main art galleries.  But first I’d promised to do some souvenir hunting though looking round the shops is a depressing experience as you realise just how much similar looking tat is on offer.  I don’t find what I’m looking for either.  So I set off for the Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery first and buy a ticket that covered three of the main galleries at a reduced price.  The ticket is actually valid for a year and I don't think you're expected to do them back-to-back.  The first gallery was to my liking with a good layout, which is largely chronological.  After seeing so much European art in New York in the summer it was refreshing to realise we haven’t exported everything from old world to new.  After a short break it was on to the Prado, which I found quite daunting for sheer scale but knowing the types of things I like to look at meant I managed to skip bits I wasn't really into.  Even so I was there for what seemed an age but I did decide that Goya probably comes out as my favourite Spanish artist.  I had a quick look in the shop and find it quite amazing the things they come up with as souvenirs of “great art”.  A fridge magnet of The Naked Maja, what is that all about?  I was looking at these with some horror and having settled on a few old fashioned postcards realised the bloke in front of me in the queue had a fistful of said magnets, mind-boggling.

I decided to take a break from art and sort out the football souvenirs I’d promised to get.  This meant a trip back to the Vicente Calderon stadium and from where I was it wasn’t that easy a trip so I ended up walking a fair bit of the way.  Then I got on the metro to go to Pyramides, which we’d been advised against the night before.  I couldn’t work out why as it is not exactly at the home end but a good walk away.  The area around the ground seemed quite different by day as one of the roads that was closed is actually quite a busy main road.  I found the shop and sorted out souvenirs, all of which could have been much easier if we’d known where to look the night before!  Then I retraced my steps back up the hill to the Metro this time making full use of it to get back to the Atocha station as the Centro Reina Sofia is across the road.  Again this is a vast art complex, which has been expanded to include all sorts of things.  As I was tired by now I decided to limit myself to the modern art on one floor, which basically takes you toward Picasso’s Guernica at the far end.  No longer behind bulletproof glass it is impressive but I can’t say it overwhelmed me.  One interesting thing was that in various places they were showing a selection of films so if you wanted to you could catch up on early Luis Bunuel or in one corner, as a contrast, Buster Keaton.

The rest of the evening was planned to be quieter.  I’d tracked down a cinema showing films in the original language and selected “New York I Love You” a portmanteau of short stories all set in one city (have a wild guess where!).  The cinema was modern and comfortable and the audience nice and quiet.  The film was okay but nothing special and it muddled things up a bit by jumping between the stories leaving a few bits unclear.  I read later that two other stories had been dropped from the film to shorten it a bit from original festival showings.  Then I had a quiet meal before retiring to the hotel to catch up on the highlights of the second night of Champions League football.  Before retiring I did check my poorly printed out boarding pass and noticed that the time of the flight was an hour earlier than I’d put in my diary!

In the morning I decided to play safe time wise and believe the earlier time was right.  So it was basically breakfast followed by packing, with that usual thing of seeming to have more than I started with.  I wandered up a couple of Metro stops so I could look at a building listed as of architectural interest, then on to the airport.  Luckily it was the earlier time so I didn’t have to hang around.  Bought some sweets for the office and then had the usual farce of boarding with Easyjet.  But a quick trip back getting in early enough for me to get some useful domestics done in the afternoon and to go out later!  It did turn out the next day that the sweets came to a grand total of eight in number!!

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