24 Hours in Madrid
 

In an attempt to "Get out more", and to make some use of my newly minted BAEC Gold status, I booked a short trip to Madrid. My usual departure point is MAN, but short haul Avios redemptions via LHR are terrible value and the times for the direct Iberia express flight didn't work for me, so instead it was a mix of car and rail alongside the plane travel.
This being a Bank Holiday weekend, there was engineering work on the railways so I had to start from Stafford station. It's actually a nice place. Situated next to a park in a small Midlands town.
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Departed 08:30 Stafford. Arrived in the Galleries First Lounge Heathrow T5 at 11:30 after a change in Euston and Paddington to get the Nex.
Knowing that the expected temperature in Madrid was 38C (that's 100F in old money) I decided to do this trip without a coat or jacket. The drizzly UK weather was making that look like a mistake, but it was warm enough to shrug off a few drops and it's less useless stuff to cart around. This trip was done using underseat luggage only for the same reason. So here we are in Heathrow, no coat and no luggage, just a hand bag.
I did invest in a plastic belt in an attempt to preserve my dignity going through security, but no dice, the agents there insisted that I take my belt off despite my protestations. I was wearing shoes with no metal in them as well, and they were happy to allow those, but in fact would have been happy to allow any shoes anyway as they were using body scanners not metal detector gates.
So through the horse corridor to the lounge. Quite a while till my flight departs, so I get to watch the planes start their accelleration for take off and leave plumes of jetwashed surface rain, until they later reverse the runway and I see them heading skywards instead.
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The flight was delayed by 60 minutes so I had longer in the lounge than I intended, but when the gate was announced it was A18 which was pretty much directly under where I was sat in the lounge.
The absence of gold tags on anyone else's luggage and the small numbers there, suggested that I was probably the only 'Gold in Y' and the rest were in CE when the first group was called. It was "all Group 0 and 1", no seperate call for 0 only.

The flight was pretty full, but theoretical seating held and I ended up with a whole row to myself.
As you can see I have chosen Eduardo Mendoza's "An Englishman in Madrid" as my reading material. It's not a great book, but it did mention many of the places I went to and made the visit to The Prado museum more fun.

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The flight was utterly uneventful and on arrival in Madrid I decided to just get a taxi to the hotel instead of navigating the public transport options. It's a fixed price at 33 Euros.
The hotel was booked through BA Avios hotels, but for cash not Avios. The price was the same as other online hotel agencies and hopefully I'll get a few Avios out of it.
The Hyatt Centric Gran Via is located in the absolute centre of everything in Madrid.
The room was nice, with a view of the historic Primark across the road.

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After a quick shower it was time to have a look round the city.
It's Saturday night, so all the locals are out. There's a large proportion of obvious tourists as well.
It's uncomfortably busy for me, but I am told that this is quiet for Madrid. It's the end of August and most locals have sensibly headed to somewhere else that's cooler.
I had considered going somewhere decent to eat, but in the end I decided not to bother and just nibbled on a few overpriced tapas in one of the gourmet markets, then walked around to the palace and back to the hotel.
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Sunday was really the main event.
Breakfast at The Ritz hotel (now the Mandarin Oriental Ritz) and a visit to The Prado museum next door.
The Ritz is *nice*. My hotel was trying to charge me 27 Euros for breakfast, Here it's 35, but that is money well spent in my opinion.
I went for the Ritz breakfast for 50 Euros that comes with a cooked main as well, but I think that's not really neccessary (the Eggs Benedict were tiny)
Breakfast was a leasurely 1.5 hours sampling a bit of everything.

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The Prado museum doesn't really need any introduction. And they don't allow photos.
I had my ticket prebooked so didn't need to queue up.
In the end I was third through the doors on opening. Dropped my bag at the luggage storage and spent about 5 hours walking around.
There is a cafe which serves coffee at 2.5 Euros and the 'tap water' is free there as well. "Un Agua, por favor"

That's the end of Madrid.
Walking round museums is pretty tiring. My step count is way up there.
To get back to the airport I took the municipal airport transfer bus 203.
It's a fixed price of 5 Euros and leaves from a stop in Cibeles square just a couple of minutes walk up from the Prado museum.
You can swipe your card\phone\watch to pay.
It was super packed and not particularly pleasant as I had to stand, but it is quick, cheap and easy, so I can't complain.

British Airways operates out of T4S in Madrid.
T4 is miles away from the rest of the airport and T4S is miles away from T4.
I had intended to get my boarding pass at the airport desk (having checked in online the night before).
This was because I had heard that Fast track tended to baulk at BA electronic passes.
In the event, BA IT meant I couldn't have downloaded my boarding pass last night even if I had wanted to.
When I got to the airport it was too early for the BA desks to be open, so I used the airport wifi to download the boarding pass.
The guard of the fast track entrance was a bit bruque, but mollified by pointing to the place on my phone boarding pass where it said "Fast Track". The scan beeped okay and I was in to security. They have the new scanners and the lovely lady supervising the tray loading was insistent that everyone leave absolutely eveything in their bags. It worked fine.
The people part of security failed for me again. It was a normal metal detector not a body scanner. This time my belt was ok, but my shoes (now walking shoes) had to come off and go through the scanner. I must have been through airport security 1000 times, why can I never seem to do it without some sort of complication?
Once through security, you have to take a lift to the transit train to T4S and then the lift up to transit\passport control at the other end.
There is an Iberia lounge in T4 just after security, but it's miles away from the BA gates so I gave it a miss and went straight to the Velasquez lounge in T4S.
The lounge is literally inside the duty free shop.

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The lounge has a nice view of the apron, but is the longest thinnest lounge I have ever seen.
It's main part is a very long thin strip, but there are also short strips down the edges at each end as well. At one of these nubs is a deserted bar which is the only place you can get hard liqour, at the other end is a deserted dining room with proper tables. If you wanted to have a martini in the dining room you would have walked off many calories to make it happen.

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The lounge was initially busy and had many of 'the usual suspects' such as loud guy on phone doing business deals (but in Spanish).
And of course, innappropriate unshod feet.

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On the way out I had nachos with chilli con carne in the GF lounge.
In Spain the nearest I could get was Kettle chips and octopus salad.

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The flight back was also delayed by over an hour.
I had to be careful, the ice bucket at the food station had several bottles in it, one of which was not wine but in fact Manzanilla sherry.
As the main Iberia flights departed we were left with just a few folks in a very quiet lounge. A young chap came by and asked if I wanted anything, I didn't, but he left me a bowl of popcorn anyway.
There are a few Latam flights on 787s going from here to South America, but they are the exception rather than the rule, most of the other flights are short haul from T4S as the main Iberia long hauls go from other terminals.

Eventually on to the plane. Theoretical seating held again for an empty middle seat on a full flight but not a row to myself this time.
At Heathrow my driver was waiting for me despite the late hour, but apparently didn't have any means to pay the £13.50 parking charge, so I paid it and he didn't get a tip :(
The £216 charge for a taxi back to the Midlands was a pretty good deal really, hotel and train would have cost about the same. I am doing that soon at Gatwick, so we'll see how the two options compare.

Thanks for your TR. Can only but agree with your comments re the Velasquez lounge at T4S. Having the bar at one end and the dining area at the other is unusual in the extreme..........that said I have put quite a few steps in while at that particular lounge!

FYI, that dining room gets rammed in the evenings as they serve full meals there before the S. America bank that leaves around midnight. It's a pretty pleasant option.