Parading through the Prado

 Gripe of the day: European showers! The tap is designed in an arcane manner giving no indication of what is hot or cold and in order to turn the tap on one must stand directly under the shower head so it is always exciting to find out whether one will go into hypothermic shock or receive 3rd degree burns; the floors have been lined with olive oil extract; the shower curtain if actually present is designed to allow maximum spillage of water outside the shower recess and the plugs drain at a speed somewhat slower than the ingress so drowning is a real possibility! My explanation for these poor design features is that the average eurotrash rarely takes advantage of any personal hygeine facilities!

Anyway today we do our full day tour of Madrid. We meet our tour guide who tells us that a cup of coffee is included in our tour-amazing value. For the first few interminable hours we are bombarded by the history of the royal houses of Europe; take home messages: they all loved marrying their closest relatives, the Hapsburgers all had weak chins and they had cool names like Joan the Mad, Fred the Unreliable and Norman the Negligent.

We ended the walk at the Prado, which is like a really old version of the National Gallery of Victoria. We see a lot of old masters as well as a lot of old paintings. There is a whole lot of weird shit by Hieronymos Bosch,

which made one wonder what he had been taking as well as Goya stuff,

which made you wonder what he should have been taking!

Dinner tonight is at The Sobrino De Botin restaurant famous for being the oldest restaurant in the world and for the mass slaughter of baby pigs(sorry kiddies)

Sorry little piggies

A great big bowl of steaming tripe

Beauty and the pig

Pig Yum