After Barcelona, my mother and I ventured over to Madrid, Spain’s capital. I was super excited to go because I knew everyone there spoke Spanish (vs. Catalan in Barcelona), so I’d be hearing it everywhere and also have the opportunity to speak it. I mapped out the city and planned out 3 full days of adventure, starting with the famous Puerta del Sol on the first morning. Unfortunately, there was such an amazing crowd of people that I didn’t really get any pictures of it… We exited out of the metro and were immediately pushed into a hoarde of people, we couldn’t even pull our cameras out. Not that we wanted to, we just kind of wanted to get out of there as soon as we could.
This is a picture of new year’s at Puerta del Sol… but I’m telling you, it was something like this even a few days before. Photo Cred http://www.thenewsignificance.com
To be fair, it was in the days leading up to New Year’s, so that may be why there were so many people… but it wasn’t pleasant, so we headed on to the next thing. People had told us to visit the beautiful Plaza Mayor, and that there were some great cafes to check out there and people watch. When we arrived, we saw booths set up all over the square, half of them open and selling weird creepy hats and cheap toys and the other half of them closed. No one was buying, it was just a couple of vendors standing around having a smoke. It was unfortunate because it pretty much blocked our entire view of the square, plus one half of the building surrounding the square was covered in construction tarp. So we didn’t get any pictures there either… 😦 although this is what it should’ve looked like:
Photo Cred: http://www.disfrutamadrid.com
From there, we headed to our next destination: Mercado de San Miguel. Finally, a successful visit! The place was buzzing with people, and everywhere you looked there were loads of different food and drink options. There was a stall dedicated solely to olives, for instance. Black olives, green olives, green olives stuffed with sardines and wrapped in pepers, olive skewers with onion and sundried tomato, etc… you get the picture. Another stall that sold seafood had all of their items placed on plastic plates, all stacked up on one another 15 plates high, ready to pass out. And, of course, there is as much sangria as your heart desires. Of course, this is a tourist attraction… so everything is a bit more expensive. It definitely isn’t a place you go for a meal, but rather somewhere you go for a snack or a drink and take a look around to enjoy the ambiance.
Photo Cred bilybilybaby.com
Do you see the sea urchins? They have everything!
See the weird gray and white things on the right and left? We figured out later that that was actually a weird fish protein that is apparently very popular here =X It didn’t taste bad, it was just… strange.
After the market, we headed towards the Royal Palace. We made a quick detour once there because we heard some chanting a couple streets over. There was a demonstration going on, and unfortunately I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying besides “Libertad!,” or “Freedom!” Freedom from what? I couldn’t tell you. But it was a small group, maybe about 15 demonstrators, and then a big group of police surrounding them. We stood there for about 10 minutes watching, and during that time at least 10 other officers showed up and started passing out riot gear. At one point, an officer started yelling at one of the boys and the tension was so high I swore something big was about to happen. We decided to leave soon after…
I asked the mother in my host family if she happened to know anything about it, and she said in Madrid, there’s a protest going on every day. Who knows?
Then we finally made it to the Plaza de Oriente in front of the Royal Palace. Unfortunately, it being winter and all, I am sure the Plaza wasn’t nearly as beautiful as it will be in a couple months with all of the springtime flowers… but it was still a nice plaza, with some street performers and vendors.
We wrapped our way around the building and finally found the entrance to the Palace itself… but quickly realized we made a big mistake by not buying our tickets online. We had to wait about an hour in line te get in, versus people who had bought their tickets online got to go to the front of the line. Stupid. Don’t make our mistake! I could kick myself, it was such a big waste of time.
But anyways… the Palacio Real de Madrid is the official living quarters of the royal family, but they really only use it for ceremonies. The place is absolutely gigantic… it took as at least two hours to get through it, and towards the end we were really just rushing it because we wanted to get on to the next thing. This palace was beyond beautiful. There were too many things to count covered in gold, velvet on the walls and floors, amazing sculptures and paintings… it was mind-blowing to see so much wealth in one place. Especially in a country so hurt by the economic crisis. Hmm…
They don’t let you take pictures inside once you are past a certain point, but here’s an idea of one of the rooms (I randomly found online):
This building is just straight across from the Royal Palace, but you can’t go in… I couldn’t figure out what it was but I thought it was a beautiful building itself!
The next day, we went to the CaixaForum because I had heard about it’s vertical garden. Artist Patrick Blanc designed this, and it contains over 250 species of plants with absolutely no soil. It was pretty cool! But again, I am sure it is even cooler in the Spring. We also went into the CaixaForum since it was cheap and saw the Roni Horn exhibit along with an Ancient Roman/Greek exhibition. It is probably a good idea to look into the exhibitions before going to see if it is anything you’d be interested in. When I first walked into the Roni Horn exhibit, I was extremely confused… it was all about how this woman’s face changed depending on what water she was in (I didn’t see it). But there was also many other works there that I found very interesting.
Roni Horn floor art. I found the quotes very interesting.
One of the things people told me before going to Madrid was that we NEEDED to try a Calamari Sandwich (or bocadillo de calamares). My mother and I were skeptical… I mean, we LOVE seafood of all kinds, but a calamari SANDWICH? It just seems like a waste of good seafood to have it masked by a bunch of bread. But, we decided to try it anyways. When in Madrid…
I’m so happy we stopped for one! It was absolutely delicious. Just the right amount of spices, perfectly delicious, and somehow the bread just worked. We got it from a place called El Brillante de Atocha which I had heard served the best bocadillo in Madrid. I highly recommend it!
Photo Cred http://www.planetware.com
After that, we went to the world famous Prado Museum. Again, we made the same mistake of not buying our tickets online >.< Anyways, the museum is beautiful, inside and out. However, it is extremely hard to see it all. It’s important to look into which areas in the museum interest you, and then only go to those rooms. The museum is way too huge to go through in one day, and I am super happy we didn’t bother with the audio guides because hell… ain’t nobody got time for that. I can only see myself taking advantage of the audio guide if we only went to one or two of the rooms and wanted to know about the era and paintings in detail. What my mother and I ended up doing was going slowly through the first couple rooms (which took over an hour), realizing how much more there was to see, and then kind of quick-walking through the rest of the museum, not wanting to miss anything important. By the end, my head hurt… way too much art in such a short period!
Beautiful building at the famous Plaza Cibeles (Starbucks life)
Thank God there’s so many flags, I wouldn’t have known what country I was in.
Then we walked around the Gran Via and saw the famous Metropolis building. From what I understand, it isn’t really famous for anything specific except just looking pretty and being along one of the biggest Gran Vias in Spain. But hell, I thought it looked pretty too… and it is definitely nice to walk around that area at night, even though it is a bit touristy. I highly recommend a restaurant just a block past the Metropolis on the called GranVia Uno. We went there twice on our short trip to Madrid, and the food was delicious and they had decently cheap wine. The interior of this restaurant is beautiful!
Also, right across the street from the Metropolis is a building called the Círculo de Bellas Artes, which has many exhibitions but also, most notably, a nice patio area on the very top that has gorgeous views of Madrid (I believe it costs about €4 to go up). Unfortunately we went up on a quite cold and windy day, but when the spring and summer comes along it would be a fantastic place to have a drink and enjoy the beautiful views. We went at night, but I am sure it’d be gorgeous during the day as well! Probably even better photo opportunities.
Our last day, we explored the Parque del Retiro which is a huge (I cannot stress just how huge) park right next to the Prado museum. It was very nice for a stroll, but again I wished we were there in spring. Towards the north part of the park is a huge man-made lake where you can take out a row-boat, and along the paths there are many street vendors selling purses and sunglasses. It’s too bad they don’t have parks like that where I come from!
If you exit the park at the north end, you’ll end up at the Puerta de Alcalá, which is a famous archway that once served as the entry point to the city. Honestly, it is good to see… but not really worth going out of your way for unless you’re a history/architecture buff.
Overall, we enjoyed our stay in Madrid and we are glad we went, but I personally prefer Barcelona. Yes, I liked being able to speak Spanish for once and be spoken to in Spanish, but I felt like a lot of the waiters and workers were rather rude. For instance, more than once I would approach someone in Spanish to ask a simple question and they’d cut me off: “Just say it in English.” Rude. I figured these people are probably jaded by all of the tourists that flood this city, but it was very frustrating for me nonetheless. The sights were also very nice, but there was just something I preferred about the vibes in Barcelona and the people. Would I go back? Sure, maybe. But I’m not dying to.
Living My Dream 
