Sunday in the Park.

September 24th. Sunday in the Park.

I can not imagine a better way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon that strolling around a beautiful park amidst trees and water.  That's exactly what we did. Retiro Park has been around since the 1500's, once the private domain of royalty is now a beautiful and relaxing public providing a backyard for the thousands of residents of urban Madrid.. It is a massive 300 acre greenspace park.

Children run and play in the playgrounds. Families picnic beneath towering shady trees.

The centre piece of this magnificent park is the Crystal Palace, built in 1887. It is used for exhibitions and special events and sits, fairytale-like, with a small lake and fountains. Turtles, ducks and geese enjoy the coolness of the pond on a hot day.

At the end of the park is a man-made lake called El Estanque. Here a huge towering statue and monument to King Alfonso XII of Spain dominates the area as small rowboats float around the lake. You can rent a rowboat for an hour for 8 Euros. (PS. It is not as easy to row a rowboat as it might look since you are sitting backwards and can not see where you are going!)

Another large exhibition hall exists where various art exhibits run, currently between exhibits we were unable to visit it.

An ice cream to cool us down, and we are on our way to the Reina Sofia Art Museum to see a famous Picasso painting called The Guernica.

This famous painting was done during the early days of the Second World War when Franco, who aligned with Hitler and Mussolini, agreed to allow Hitler to test a very devastating bomb on one of the small Spanish villages named Guernica. Picasso depicts the devastation as the village is annihilated. It has become an iconic work to depict the effect of war and sits in this Contemporary Art Museum in Madrid.

Come With Me as we head to Granada and the iconic Alhambra....

Eat, drink and be merry... in Madrid.

Eat drink and be Merry...

All Spanish people like their food... tapas, paella, seafood... whatever it is. They say it is cheaper to go out to eat than to stay home and they do frequently. They eat late and it is very social event. They hop from restaurant to restaurant grazing on tapas as they go.

So, we decide to go like the locals and join a tapas and dinner tour in Madrid.

We meet up with Daniel, our guide and a small group of travelers and head out. Daniel is a teacher by day and a food tour guide by night and he loves to share the history of his city.

We start out near the Royal Palace and make our way through the streets stopping as Daniel shares tidbits of history here and there.

Our first stop is a typical tapas place where friends meet for a drink and a bite to eat, Casa Labre. It is crowded and we find a little corner near the bar, standing room only, which is typical. Daniel brings us red wine to sample. We are skeptical but drink it anyway (we are all white wine drinkers.) It was actually not bad... for red wine. Along with the wine he brings us a plate of croquettes. These are a very popular tapas in Spain, made from potatoes that are soft and usually shaped into a ball, covered with bread crumbs are fried. There is usually some other ingredient in the potato.  It tastes creamy and smooth, we guess it is cheese and are surprised to learn it is not... it is actually cod mashed into the potato.

Tidbit... in Spain the beer taps turn to the side, not pulled down..

We continue... through Puerto del Sol.  There is a tile in the sidewalk they call The Ground Zero of Madrid. This is the very centre spot of Madrid where all distances are measured from. If you measure the distance from Madrid to any point (for example to Barcelona), you would measure the distance from this point.

We continue on back through Plaza Mayor (seems like we are taking almost the same route as our morning tour!)

Daniel shares his knowledge and love of Madrid and Spain with us as we wander through beautiful Madrid.

We spot at our second spot, Museo d'Jambon (yes that means Museum of Ham, but it is actually a tapas bar)  Ham is a big deal here, one of their main specialties. There are three kinds of ham and the price varies significantly.

First, is regular ham from the normal kind of white pig like we know.

Second is Iberian ham which comes from a black pig, it is supposedly a much better quality.

Third, and very expensive, is acorn fed ham... black pig, fed nothing but acorns for the last 6 months so the pork is very tender and mild. This is a "special occasions" ham which is very expensive.  (Note: we do not sample the acorn-fed ham!)

As the sun sets we make our way through the darkening streets. 

The oldest restaurant in Madrid. You can't get a reservation it is so popular.

Ruins of the old Islamic area of Madrid are now preserved near the Cathedral.

The Cathedral at night.

Finally, exhausting and 20,000 steps later, we head to our final destination, Casa Nicasio where we had a traditional Spanish meal of Seafood Paella, Sangria, Spanish omelette and choriza. Topped off by a round of shots .... 

A good day, but a long one... Come with me as we explore more of Madrid.

Welcome to Madrid!

Welcome to Madrid!

 Friday, September 22.

Onward Ho…  It is early Friday when we grab a cab and lake our way to Sants Station in Barcelona to catch our train to Madrid.

It is a sleek modern Ave train, a fast speed train that will take us to Madrid in 3 hours.

We arrive at our hotel. Hotel Artrip, a small boutique hotel in the Lavapies area of Madrid. It is new and modern with only 11 rooms. While the rooms are small and lack a lot of space to store anything and not much privacy. But we love it… the young staff are friendly and super accommodating. The wifi is good and they provide a mobile hotspot we can take anywhere with us and connect to the hotel’s internet… something we used daily for GPS as we wandered the streets. They provided a great continental breakfast everyday and were more than helpful with tips on where to go, how to get there, best restaurants, shows, etc.

View from our Hotel Artrip in Madrid.

Day one: we wander up a steep little street to the Plaza St. Ana, a small square that is surrounded by little neighbourhood restaurants and bars, a theatre (teatro), a flamenco place, and a beautiful old hotel. The restaurants and bars spill into the square. We find a little table under an umbrellas and sip ice cold white sangria (we decide we prefer the red.)Madrid is very warm- high 20’s everyday- and the cold sangria is always very refreshing.

 

We discover a lovely little Vinoteca (wine bar) with tapas and decide we will return later that evening for dinner.

 Day Two: The day of walking tours.

The hotel has invited us to a free walking tour they provide for guests. We meet our guide Laura at 10:00 and head out. Laura is a native Madridian- she has spent her life in Madrid, as have her parents and her grandparents. She is a wealth of knowledge and history.

We learn that Madrid is newer than some of the other cities like Barcelona. It was just a small village until 1561 when King Phillip III decided to move the capital from Toledo to Madrid and he established his court there. The government of Spain was controlled largely through the Church which was not always to the good of Spain. Even though Columbus had discovered the Americas by then and was bringing ship loads of gold back to Spain, the money was largely going to the Church to finance more cathedrals and convents and the life of the aristocracy who were also supporting the Church. The infrastructure of Spain was suffering and nothing was going to support industry or agriculture. Phillip wanted to make government more independent.

The Royal Palace was built in Madrid and Phillip and his court took up residence there. Today Madrid has over 3 million people and is a bustling modern city. Madrid prides itself on its inclusiveness. There are no separate quarters for this group of people or that group. Everyone mixes together and live harmoniously.

We start our tour at our hotel in the area of Lavapies (which means Washing feet – the area was once a mosque under Muslim rule and this is the place where the worshippers washed their feet before going in to prayer). We pass through a local market where fruits, vegetables, meat and seafood are sold. We are told that Madrid, despite being a landlocked city, is the 2^nd highest consumer of seafood in Europe.

We stroll through the Literatos area which was created by Napolean to bring a more French and cultured area to Madrid. Here writers and artists lived and were free to thrive in their craft, creating some of the greatest artists and writers like Cervantes and Picasso and Dali. Galleries and Museums exist in this area.

We pass a cloistered convent. Under Spanish Catholic rule the area had many convents, which were closed under French rule.

Streets are marked with ceramic signs that contain not only the name of the street but a diagram depicting what it means since many people in those times were illiterate.

We make our way to Plaza Mayor, the main (major) plaza of that time. It is spectacular. There were several gates leading into a large central courtyard that was the centre of the city. Everything took place here – from public executions to markets and bull fights. The arches and walls are original but much of the buildings were rebuilt after a massive fire in the 1800’s.  Originally it was 7 stories high which was quite a feat for those times. Everything above the ground floor is living accommodations or apartments, now many are airbnb’s.

We continue through Puerta del Sol, the centre of Madrid.

 And on to the Royal Palace and its beautiful gardens.

We bid good-bye to Laura and continue to explore on  our own, making our way back along the walking street, Calle del Arenal.