Bienvenidos a Madrid!

July 18, 2017

Bienvenidos a Madrid!

Hola!

Today is our first day in Spain's capital city of Madrid. We're so excited to be here for the next four days to explore and visit some really cool art museums.

We woke up this morning and got ready to go. The boys walked to Dunkin' Donuts and la Plaza de España for breakfast and a visit while mom and I slept in. We packed up and headed to the Sevilla Santa Justa train station to catch our 11:45 train to Madrid. We grabbed a snack, and hopped on. Train travel is efficient and fast - we passed through Cordoba and other parts of the Spanish countryside but arrived in Madrid around 2:15 PM.

Our Apartment

We are staying on the same street as the Chocolateria San Gines in the Puerta del Sol area of Madrid. We're about a block from Plaza Mayor and are really close to many pedestrian streets and Gran Via. Irene (one of the employees for our apartment complex) gave us some food suggestions at check in and recommended that we avoid the wax museum. (Supposedly it's not great in Madrid!)

Rick Steves Walk

Throughout this trip, we've been using Rick Steves' Best of Spain book to help us see the cities we've visited. We decided to go on one of his "walks" to see some of the main sites close to our apartment.

Plaza Mayor: Spain’s grandest plaza, featuring a large statue of King Phillip III and bright red walls enclosing the pedestrians-only area. In the past, this square was used for all kinds of activities from bullfights to hearings during the Spanish Inquisition. Today, it’s a great place to eat, drink, and people watch!

Mercado de San Miguel: Indoor market with any food you can imagine! We got granizada (an iced, fruity drink), horchata, tapas, a traditional Spanish toffee, and more as an afternoon snack since dinnertime isn’t until after 8 in Madrid.

Oldest Door in Madrid: Designed in Moorish-style architecture, this is believed to be the oldest door in Madrid, per Rick Steves and his sources. (Plus a cute ice cream cone that I saw on the street!)

Town Hall: This square features some of Spain’s symbols and a statue dedicated to Don Alvaro de Bazan, a former military general who prevented Ottoman takeover of Europe.

Church and Convent of Corpus Christi: A humble church building constructed by one of Spain’s wealthy families in the 1600s.

Assasination Attempt Memorial: In 1906, a terrorist attempted to assassinate the newlywed King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenie by throwing a bouquet attached to a bomb into the crowd. Although the bomb didn’t hit the monarchs, it did take 23 lives; this memorial honors those lost that day.

Almudena Cathedral: A gray and white, modern-looking cathedral with a Gothic interior and a colorful ceiling. Worth a visit if you’re in town and only costs a Euro per person.

Royal Palace: This is the 3^rd largest palace in Europe, rivaled only by Versailles (Paris) and Hofburg Palace (Austria). We didn’t go inside, but it’s incredibly ornate and covered in gold.

Plaza de Oriente: Features statues of Visigoth kings and Spanish King Phillip IV.

Plaza de Isabel II: Right next to Calle del Arenal. Features a statue of Queen Isabel, who ruled in the 1800s.

Calle del Arenal: Pedestrian shopping street with a checkered sidewalk.

Escher Museum: Not a stop on Rick Steves’ tour, but we decided to stop here because we’d been talking about Escher throughout the trip. It was a temporary exhibition (until September) featuring 200 Escher originals and some fun places to take pictures.

Puerta del Sol: Madrid’s crazy pedestrian zone. Tons of Street performers and large crowds (even bigger later at night!)

We came back for a brief siesta before heading back out for dinner. We ate at Grazie Mille, a nearby Italian restaurant. (Tapas are wonderful, but two weeks straight aren’t. We’re eating lots of Italian here to mix it up!) Mom and Nick split a pizza while dad and I got separate pasta dishes – mine had a pistachio sauce and dad got a normal red sauce pasta.

For dessert, we stopped by Chocolateria San Gines, a well-known spot to get churros in Madrid. We got 12 churros and 2 cups of hot chocolate for 8 Euros. Like the Barcelona ones, but better! (I think.)

Evening Paseo

We went out for a walk along Gran Via, Madrid’s major shopping district, to walk off dinner and churros. It was fun to explore a little to help us orient ourselves in this new, bigger city.