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Showing posts with the label TRAVEL - MADRID 1

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Florence

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FLORENCE     Florence –  the capital of the Tuscany region and the cradle of Renaissance   We opted for Flix Bus while traveling from Venice to Florence. The road journey takes about three and a half-hour. In Florence, it terminates at the rear end of Santa Maria Novella (SMN) train station. One of Italy’s busiest stations, it got its name from Santa Maria Novella Church just across the plaza from the main entrance. We debarked at the station and refreshed ourselves at McDonald's before hiring a cab for our hotel. Florence, popularly known as ‘Firenze’ by the Italians, is located in central Italy. This dreamy city with a romantic name is the regional capital of the lovely Tuscany region.   Columbus Hotel, where we stayed, is located in Lugarno District. We always prefer to book our hotels through Booking.com as we always land up getting good hotels at good locations. Despite being a little away from the heart of the city and Santa Maria Novella station

Madrid 1

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  Madrid - the Royal Spanish Capital Nico and Eva. A lovely Spanish couple from Madrid. Nico is a banker and takes care of their apartment in Madrid. His wife Eva mostly takes care of their apartment at Tenerife Island, but she is impeccably superb as a hostess. Unfortunately, we could not meet her during our visit to Madrid. But she made it a point to coordinate our visit and stay from her WhatsApp handles. After receiving our arrival details, she sent a carefully worded text which included a way to the public transport terminus after alighting from the ALSA bus at its terminal station.   Many a time  I fall prey to my impatient nature. In this case, I overlooked the word ‘escalators’ mentioned by Eva. We took the escalator which connected the platform to the concourse. Once at the concourse we felt lost, not knowing where to get our bus from. Since my wife knows Spanish, she got help from the locals. At the opposite end, there were a series of ‘escalators’ as well as a l