In Madrid, we took half a culture class that we are continuing here in Valencia. There, we stayed in a beautiful hotel in downtown Madrid called Petit Palace Italia. The view from my window was gorgeous, looking down the equivalent of their Broadway, called Gran Via.
We landed on Sunday, August 6th at 9am, and proceeded to a full day of activities, starting with a bus tour of Madrid. We got out and walked around and took pictures of a few awesome places.
The Temple of Debod is an actual Egyptian temple that was taken apart in Egypt and reconstructed in Spain, on top of an overlook that spans across the entire city and surrounding towns.
Then we went to Plaza de España (I ran there the next day, so pretty!) It has an open market and lots of little stands where people sell things. The main attraction is a statue/memorial/fountain of Cervantes.
The next day we had a 2 hour walking tour of Madrid. The other kids and I were joking that we should just record ourselves saying, "wow, look at that building, it's gorgeous!" because we kept saying it over and over. It's not like every once in a while you see a piece of amazing architecture, it is literally every building we walked by. I tried to capture some of them in pictures, but I really couldn't do it. No camera has a scope big enough to capture the views we saw with enough detail to really do them them justice. Here are my attempts:
We also quickly walked past the royal palace. We will get an official tour when we return to Madrid at the end of the trip in a few weeks because we ran out of time last week. Sorry the picture's kind of hard to see; the sun is so bright here!
The main center in every city in Spain is traditionally called Plaza Mayor (confusing, I know). The one in Madrid is below:
We also came across the Guinness Book of World Records' official oldest restaurant in the world: Botin Restaurant which opened in 1725. No, I didn't eat there, but I hope to when we go back to Madrid!
But life is not all about history and walking around beautiful towns. We had to write a paper for class and since the wifi was terrible in the hotel, I found a cafe around the corner and went there for a few afternoons to write it. Cafe de la Luz is my new favorite place because it's just so impossibly adorable. Their wifi password is "sonrie me otra vez" which translates to "smile at me again," and that's only one if it's tiny details that makes me love it. The men's and women's bathrooms are distinguished with pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Gene Kelly. There's a chalkboard that people write notes on, none of the chairs match, the coffee & wifi are strong and the food is amazing. If I ever go back to Spain (which I hopefully will!) I will bring whoever I am with to this tiny cafe off the beaten path. It gets it's own paragraph in a blog post that covers a week because I love it that much.
Conache
Other favorite place. All the food was extremely good in Madrid (aside from the vast portions of ham), but I had the best meal of all there. Grilled chicken in vegetable skewer with mixed green salad and spicy tomato sauce.
El Prado
We got an hour-long tour of this famous museum. No pictures allowed inside, sorry! But here's the outside! I don't know that much about art history, but the paintings we saw were pretty impressive. We saw works by El Greco, Velázquez, Goya and a bunch of others. The one that was most famous was Las Meninas by Velázquez.
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| image from museodelprado.es |
There are so many huge, beautiful parks in this city, it's great! I ran to this one on Friday, without having to leave the street my hotel was on. There's a lake in the middle! And tons of fountains, tanning areas, restaurants, etc, etc. I think this is their Central Park equivalent, but there are probably 10 other parks in Madrid that I just haven't found yet.
Mercado de San Miguel
Public markets are becoming my favorite things. I loved Pike Place in Seattle, Granville Island in Vancouver and the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Madrid has one too! It's called Mercado de San Miguel. I got the most amazing ice cream there. I asked the woman at the ice cream stand what the best flavor was (in Spanish, of course) and she said "avellana." I had no idea what that meant, but I got it anyway and it turned out to be hazelnut. I don't think I can go back to any other flavor. I've never seen it in the States, but I'm going to look for it everywhere now.
This is the tourist center of town, basically a Times Square. Tons of shopping, food, bars, street performers, etc. I was there or walking through it almost every day since it is in the middle of everything. The symbol of Madrid is a bear climbing a tree (I'm sure there's some historical significance there) and there's a huge statue of it that identifies the plaza right when you enter. It seemed fitting to take a picture there.
On Saturday, we did a day trip to Segovia and Avila, 2 ancient cities about an hour away from Madrid. I got some awesome pictures that I'll share soon! Followed by some highlights in Valencia. Sorry I'm creating a backlog in photos/information here...reliable wifi and free time are hard to find in combination. In conclusion, yes I'm alive, no I'm not fluent in Spanish yet, and I miss everyone like crazy! Please email m/What's App/Facebook message me, I can respond pretty quickly on my phone! :)
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