Day 20 - Saturday 13th May

Today we will be leaving Santillana and driving to Madrid. After breakfast in the hotel dining lounge, a staff member helped us downstairs with our bags and drove out of the hotel through this delightful town at 9:30am.

When we woke up, it was raining and the temperature was 13C. By the time we left the hotel, it had stopped raining and there was some blue sky.

Heading south on route A67, the scenery was picturesque with green rolling hills and some mountains in the distance. It was similar to the scenery between San Sebastian and Santillana a couple of days ago.

Whereas the motorway coming into Santillana had been windy, this motorway heading south was quite straight. Instead of winding around the hills, it went straight through them. There were plenty of tunnels through the hills and long bridges or viaducts across he valleys.

Some tunnels we more than 1km long and there was at least one tunnel that was more than 2km long. The tunnels are fairly basic - simply excavated through the rock without any ventilation systems or emergency evacuation routes.

After about 100km, the terrain was flatter until we got within about 100km of Madrid where we climbed to a higher altitude. As we approached these hills, we saw black clouds and sure enough it started to rain.

At about 1pm, it was getting hard to drive because of the heavy rain and so we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. By the time we set off again, the rain was easing. The temperate had fallen to just 8C.

The TomTom seemed to lead us astray in getting to the airport where we had to drop off the car. The signs said to go in one direction whereas the TomTom took us elsewhere. We seemed as though we were circling the airport and not getting any closer. We drove on lots of different motorways.

Eventually we saw a sign for Terminal 1 and we followed the sign rather than the TomTom. We found the Enterprise car rental return and handed over the keys at 3pm. Mission accomplished.

We were due to met an Insight representative in Terminal 1 at 4pm for a bus to take us to our hotel. We were just about the only people on the bus.

It was close to 5pm by the time we reached the hotel, checked in and got to our room. Philippe, our tour director for this trip, was waiting for us in the hotel foyer.

The Miguel Angel Hotel is a very impressive, high-class hotel. What's more, they had upgraded us to a club room on the fifth floor. Our room had a real live double bed (king size). This is the first time we've had a double bed for a while because we had two single beds pushed together on the river cruise and in the subsequent places.

The Insight welcome was in the hotel foyer at 6pm. This was an opportunity for us to start meeting other people on the tour.

Next we all got aboard a bus that drove us through the city to a fancy restaurant in the middle of town. Pedro, the bus driver did a sterling job of getting us there. The lanes in the city are not wide enough for a bus but that was chicken feed compared with the ramp into the car park - there was less than an inch to spare on each side of the bus.

From the car park, it was a short walk through the bustling plaza to the restaurant. Our group went downstairs to a quaint arched stone area that apparently used to be the stables. It was a nice setting for our first dinner with the group.

Back at the hotel, we decided to go to the Club Lounge where I enjoyed a very good glass of red wine. Barbara and Russell joined us there. We were surprised to find the WiFi here was excellent whereas it was very poor in our room nearby.