Head in the clouds

Can you tell I've been looking at Dali this evening?

I was happy, early this morning, to leave last night's hostel where I'd been cold overnight while kept awake by the room's snorer. I didn't expect the promised breakfast to have been left out for me and I was right. But I shook the place off in my few minutes' walk to the station for a train to Barcelona to catch an all-day bus to Madrid. Nearly 750km today.

Mostly I'm not in hostels but am booking my accommodation through Airbnb, aiming to find people who are trying to make ends meet and to avoid those who buy up properties for profit and drive out locals. Sometimes I fail but tonight I have really succeeded - I am staying with an Ecuadorian family in a dark flat near Madrid Atocha station. They are massively friendly and happy to help me with Spanish. In complete ignorance, I find myself in a barrio that Time Out calls 'up and coming' - Lavapiés - and it's quite clear: cheap Indian and Arabic take-aways right next to tapas being served with large glasses of wine on metal tables on the pavement. I've seen it in London, I've seen it in Oxford. This family will not be able to afford the rent here in five years time, Airbnb or not.

Opposite the station, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía - the modern art museum - is open till 9pm so after I'd stuck my nightclothes under tonight's pillow I walked down the road to visit. I spent longer than I should in temporary exhibitions that frustrated me, then went back in time to the permanent collection and discovered that I don't hate everything that Dali painted. I didn't find any I loved though. I did, of course, go to pay homage to Picasso's Guernica.