Madrid Spain

 Madrid, Spain

We had visited Barcelona in 2016, so upon disembarking from the ship, we took a High Speed Train to Madrid.  Reaching speeds of up to 186 mph, the countryside flew by.   We saw rolling hills of farms and later dryer lands with olive trees.  The train arrive early in about 2:45 min.  It was easy to catch an Uber to our apartment operated by a US company Sonder.   It’s nice to have a small kitchen and living room in contrast to our small cabin onboard the ship.   After unpacking it’s off to a Lidl Grocery to pick up breakfast and ingredients for two dinners.  Tomorrow we will go on a food tour, which we have learned is both fun, delicious and a good overview of a city.  

We have 10 nights in Madrid to see the city and a few day trips outside the City.   This post will cover our time in Madrid.  We will post our day trips separately.  

Dinner at a good restaurant near our place.

Secret Food Tour 

Is a company we used in Edinburgh and Singapore.   Again, we had a great guide here in Madrid.  It was a small group consisting of a young couple and a family.  In addition to 5 stops to taste the food of Madrid, our guide shared information on both the city today and its history.

EL Riojano 

Our first stop is a gorgeous wood and marble shop.  The front entrance looks like a pastry shop, but the back is small tea room.   We are here to bolster our energy for the day.  I’m talking sugar and caffeine! The sugar is a local variation on French toast.  Brioche bread soaked in milk cooked on the grill with a egg coating and a dusting of cinnamon powder.    Its consistency is almost custard like.   For caffeine you have the choice of Expresso or the specialty, Hot Chocolate.  Not being a coffee drinker, I went for the Hot Chocolate, which was like drinking a rich candy bar, it was that thick.  

 

Bartolome Gourmet

This is our stop to experience Iberian Ham.   Walking in, we knew they fed the pigs some nut.   Oh, it's not that simple.  The pigs are a particular breed and are raised free range along the border with Portugal. The ham is graded by a number of factors including male/female, cut and especially diet.  Bellota was our favorite.  Click here if you want to learn more.

Bar La Campana

Calamari like I have never had before served hot and tender.  They look like large onion rings on a fresh baguette.  They were fantastic hot with a squeeze of fresh lemon.  I who am not a fan of olives enjoyed the side of mild green olives too.  

Refra

I almost thought they sat a glass of iced tea in front of me.   It was dark and had a slice of lemon on the rim.   Spaniards like Vermouth and each restaurant is proud of their Vermouth.  This was slightly sweet. I enjoyed it very much.   I would have been in big trouble if I drank it like I do with iced tea.    We learned you should always order an alcoholic drink without any food as often the restaurant will bring you a Tapas to enjoy with it at no charge.  See below

Mirador Del Armco De Cuchilleros

For the Grand Finale, we started with a Spanish Cider.  It’s very dry and a little acidic.    Our guide demonstrated how it must be poured several feet into the glass as it wasn’t filtered, and the poring did something neither of us remembers.  It made a good show.   It’s best enjoyed with food, so we had a big spread of Cheese, Grilled Peppers, Blood Sausage and more.  To top all of that off, we could select from Cava, White or Red Wine or another Vermouth for another drink.   I enjoyed a nice Red Wine from La Rioja where we will travel to next week while Carol had Cava.  

During the tour, our guide shared how Madrid with 4 million residents in the city limits alone is a large city that has experienced Gentrification.   To preserve small family businesses, it grants a tax exemption to business of over 100 years of age, held by the same family and conducting the same type of business. They are also commemorated with a brass plaque.  One such business is Casa Hernanz which was established in 1860.  Carol purchased the shoes below.

Top right shows the materials used in the shoes
Left is the commemorative plaque
Right Carol’s new shoes

Exploring Central Madrid

We are staying in the old part of town, full of beautiful older buildings.   The are only 5 skyscrapers and they are all on the North side of town.  We enjoyed many hours of exploring the city.  

Behind me is the Cervantes Monument with his characters Don Quixote and his Squire Pancho Sancho Panza

Museo de National del Prado

The Prado Museum is over 200 years old and contains a vast collection of Spanish and European Art. We lingered in the galleries we found interesting and skipped or hurried through others as we find 2 hours is our limit.  I confess I broke the rules to capture images of the two table tops below.

Real Jardin Botanico de Madrid 

The Royal Botanical Gardens are next door to the Prado Museum.  We enjoyed a nice lunch before setting out to explore the gardens.   They were nice, but sadly some plants were not in good condition.  We were very impressed by the Bonsai, which I have a few images of in the collage below.  

Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales

This monastery is very unusual.  It was built in the mid 16th century.  It occupies the palace of Carlos I and Isabel of Portugal.  Their daughter Juana founded the monastery as a place for widowed or never married nobility.  She and her sister the widowed Queen are buried there. All of the Nuns brought a dowry which enabled the monastery to be adorned with incredible tapestries and paintings.  The tapestries are in the best condition we have ever seen.  I assume it is because of the care they received.   The grand stairway was overwhelming.  The top left and bottom images below show you how every inch of wall and ceiling are adorned.  While it is an active Monastery, the Pope granted that they may open it to the public to raise funds as wealthy nobility stopped joining the monastery.  

When we ordered tickets, we learned of a small problem to overcome.  Only guided tours of the Monastery are allowed, and they are in Spanish.   Before we went, I compared Google Translate and Apple Translate so we could understand what the guide was saying.   It was a good thing I selected the Apple App because another couple from Germany used Google which wanted to speak the translation rather than display text in a large easy to read font that we could both read.   Our only challenge was staying close enough to the guide to record his speech.   The App stopped listening if it couldn’t hear him sufficiently. 

Museo Nacional Centre de Art Reina Sofia

The Reina Sofia Museum is a modern art museum known for its large collection of modern and contemporary Spanish art.  We saw several works by Dali and Pablo Picasso including Picasso’s large mural Guernica.  It was created to commemorate the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.  It was odd that the government at the time allowed it and used it in an international exhibition.   The bombing occurred between the time the government commissioned him and the time of the event. The stages of creating it first in small scale were documented by a friend.  Did Picasso’s fame stay the hand of the government?  Madrid is known for food and its art scene.  There are 3 extremely well known art museums.  We visited 2 of the 3 because that was enough for us.  This one is considered to be the modern one, but to my chagrin no impressionist paintings at all.  I did enjoy the Picassos and Dalis.  Sorry, there were restrictions on taking photos.

They created a large atrium by enclosing the old museum with a modern new building.

Royal Palace of Madrid

The Royal Palace of Madrid is the largest in Western Europe.  It is in very good condition, partly because it was built in the 1700s after a fire burned the previous palace down.  Supposedly at the time all the top artisans came to Madrid to help build the new palace.  It is full of ceilings with lots of angels and cherubs painted on them and many gorgeous huge rooms.  Since this is still a working palace, we did not get to see everything.  We did see a huge (I do mean huge) dining room - seats 120 I think they said and there was easily 12 feet left at one end.  At one time, it was several rooms and made up the queen's quarters.  A few minutes later we wandered to a different area where we saw the new queen's quarters which too were quite nice.  Additionally, there is one room called the porcelain room literally everything in the room is porcelain.  They said the vines you see on the walls covered up the joints for putting the pieces together.

Cathedral de Santa Maria de Real de la Almudena

It was a long slow process.  The foundation was laid in 1883 as a Church, but then the plans were changed to make it a Cathedral.  Scope Creep! Then more the aesthetic requirements changed.  That’s how you get a never ending project folks.  It wasn’t finished until it was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1993.  

Side of Cathedral facing palace

Palace on left, Cathedral on right

Alter has an impressive ceiling

Pope John Paul II on right
Impressive Chapel on left

El Ritro Park

On our last day in Madrid, we decided to wander around El Ritro Park.  We only wandered around part of it because it is bigger than Central Park in New York like a lot bigger, plus it was another hot day.  The park started life as a hunting ground for the king.  We saw lots of people running, dogs having a good time and kids enjoying playgrounds.  There were great views since where we were was up on top of a good-sized hill.  One oddity was an Egyptian temple.  It seems Egypt gave Spain a Temple that would have been covered by Aswan lake for helping build the Aswan dam.  We also saw a rose garden that had a shady path for part of it so we explored that area and then decided to call it a day before we melted!  

Temple of Debod, a gift from Eqypt

Miscellaneous

We mostly walked to get to places in Madrid meaning we got to know the neighborhood where we were staying so we visited the Lidle (grocery) down the block and the Mercado San Delfonso, and a couple of the little cafes riming the local park and I checked out a couple of the shops too.  A couple of places were part of our regular route to the sites such as the Gran Via and the Puerto del Sol Plaza and the Plaza de Mayor.  I put Gran Via and Puerto del Sol together because the square which is large (several streets come off of it) and Gran Via which is a pedestrian shopping street kind of became one in my mind.  When I hit them, I knew how to get home on my own.  Plus there were lots of sites in that area.  Puerto del Sol has a couple of statutes in it including one that is the symbol of Madrid - a bear climbing/eating a strawberry tree.  Our guide told us the tree is pretty much nonexistent today partially because its fruit was so fragile.  On Friday evening, we were tired and frustrated when we did that walk.  Somewhat to my chagrin there was a huger crowd around a business blocking the whole street say 30 - 50 feet deep.  Jeff could tell there were some professional dancers at the store.  I later learned I had passed by a very popular night spot so I guess I showed my age by not being interested that evening!

Symbol of Madrid

Madrid is a good place to go to eat as we learned on our food tour.  We did cook a couple of our dinners at "home".  We also had to learn to adjust to the local eating schedule.  In Madrid, siesta is common with shops and with cafes.  If it is open between around 2 till 4 ish then it is geared towards tourists.  If the restaurant was closed in the middle of the afternoon and did not open till 8ish then it was a place that catered more to locals.  We had several good meals.  The picture at the top is from a restaurant around the corner from our apartment that has been around for many years.  We had 2 very nice dinners there for a very reasonable price.  Another night we went to a restaurant our guide had recommended for suckling pig.  We got there a little after 7 and were their first guests of the night, shortly after a couple of other obvious tourists showed up.  The food was as good as our guide had promised.  Having a true sweet tooth, I also hunted out several dessert spots.

Attractive building with a Great location across from the park