Trip Report! Day 1: Madrid

As everyone who reads this blog probably already knows, we have just gotten back from a week and a half on Spain! It was a wonderful trip, definitely right up there with Scotland on the McClure's Top Vacations list. We saw so many things and ate so much delicious food and, while I was definitely ready to see my kitties again, we both felt like we could have stayed longer in many of the places we visited. Everyone we met was so friendly and helpful and completely unannoyed (at least visibly) at our basically horrible attempts to communicate in Spanish.

The real focus of the trip was Andalucia, the southernmost part of Spain, the part the guidebooks call "the most quintessentially Spanish" region of the country. It's the area where bullfighting began, and where flamenco and tapas and siesta are all still integral parts of the society. I had never really considered going to Spain before I read a comment by someone online about that region, and after looking into it for a couple of days I was hooked. 

Nevertheless, we decided to fly into Madrid to avoid having to change planes twice. Most people seem to not think much of Madrid - there are great art museums there, but the consensus seems to be that there isn't a lot to see there otherwise. I figured having a couple of days there bookending the Andalucian part of the trip would be a good way to catch the highlights.

We arrived, as usual, at the crack of dawn, on no sleep, and took the subway into town. 

Madrid is 6 hours ahead of Raleigh, so by the time we reached our hotel at around 8:00 a.m., it was two in the morning in our heads. We stayed at the Petit Plaza Santa Barbara, which was perfect for our needs - near a metro stop but in a quieter area outside the very center of the city. 

I had emailed requesting early check-in, but they couldn't accommodate us until 11:00 a.m., so we went out to explore the city a little bit in a semi-delirious state.

It was Sunday morning, so the streets of Madrid were very quiet. We walked through Puerta del Sol, which is sort of the heart of the city and is usually very busy, but there was almost no one around. 

A short distance away is the picturesque Plaza Mayor, also very quiet at that time. We are definitely not a fan of crowds so this whole scenario was working out pretty well for us.

We then wandered over to the area near Madrid's Almudena Cathedral and the Palacios Real. The king and queen don't live in the palace, but still use it for ceremonies and special occasions.  It is huge. You can go inside but it wasn't open yet while we were passing by.

We continued along to see the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple built in the 2nd century BC that was moved to Madrid and reassembled there in 1968. It was pretty weird but neat to see - the inside was full of heiroglyphics.

Finally it was time to check into the hotel, so we did that and ended up sleeping for a few hours before heading back out to the Reina Sofia Museum, which is free on Sunday afternoons. 

The Reina Sofia is Madrid's major museum that focuses primarily on modern art; its best known work is Picasso's Guernica, which is the main reason I wanted to go. We were pretty excited to be able to walk in and see Guernica for free without feeling like we had to spend money and therefore a lot of time perusing everything else. In the last couple years I've realized I'm not too big on visiting museums unless I particularly like or know a lot about the specific art.

After the museum we wandered up into a little neighborhood to find some food. The Spanish lunchtime is mainly between 2:00 and 4:00, and in Madrid we had our first of what was to be many experiences of just missing the 4:00 cutoff. We eventually found a place called La Dolores that was open and sat down to try to decipher the menu, which was a bit beyond us in our still-exhausted state. 

Fortunately they had an option of 6 tapas for 13 euros, so we did that and let the bartender pick. We were pretty impressed by what we got - but this would be a theme of the whole trip, unbelievable value and quality for hardly any money at all. One of these was squid, which I just could not bring myself to eat. I had a little bite and it did just taste like fish but the mental hurdle was too much. I have no issue with fried calamari, though, so I realize that makes no sense. Anyway, all of these things were fantastic, and made me pretty excited for the days to come.

On the way back to the hotel we passed by Madrid's city hall.

And this building, which was a couple blocks from our hotel. Madrid has a pretty bad graffiti problem, so I guess the owners of this place decided to take the bull by the horns rather than risking vandalism like so many nearby.

At this point we were ready for real sleep, and it was finally a semi-acceptable time for bed. I fell asleep at 8:00pm and slept straight through until 8:30am! 

In general my first impression of Madrid was not great, although in retrospect it seems unfair to base an impression of a city on a one-day exploration done in a state of exhaustion. It's big, and has that Big City feeling that sort of overrides much individual character. London is like that for me, too. Anyway, it was a good place to start and the next morning we were picking up our car and heading out for Andalucia!