A week in Madrid

It's been an awesome week in Madrid, including a two-day adventure to Toledo. I’ve visited museums, spent lunchtimes in parks, tried tapas, explored the gin section, took a night time stroll and watched the sun set and ventured into the markets. All in all a great time!

Museums in Madrid

While in Madrid I visited both the Museo del Prado and Reina Sofia Museum. On Sunday afternoons at the Sofia you can visit for free between 1:30pm and 7pm. During the week you can visit the Prado for free between 6pm – 8pm.

So that’s exactly what I did, except because I showed up late to the Sofia and there was a massive queue to get into the Prada I had about 1.5 hours in each. It was an awesome way to see a museum! There wasn’t any time for lagging about. I was on a mission to see and read and learn about as much of the artwork and history inside as possible.

I saw all the greats! Picasso, Dali (or as my hostel said Dar-LI! Haha), Goya, Bosch

Gris, Rembrandt and Titian. And the end of the session everyone piled out of both museums and sat on the steps surrounding the place, thinking over all of the art they’ve just seen. Or rolling down the grassy hill for the kids. It was awesome!

Train station in the tropics

There is a tropical rainforest located in the middle of a major train station in Madrid. It houses everything you can think of and has little chairs all around it so you can sit and imagine for a moment that you’re in a tropical environment. It was a fun 5 minutes.

Park time

El Retiro Park is massive and beautiful! You can visit all types of gardens and designed areas in here and see all sorts of flowers and plants. I stumbled across this on Monday afternoon after visiting the Prado and came back for lunch on Tuesday. I walked around for a while before taking sometime on a park bench.

There was an area were you could paddle in boats, forest areas, rose gardens, a Japanese garden, statues telling a story, and so on. Beautiful.

El Rastro

El Rastro is a famous flea market that takes place every Sunday. I missed it on my first Sunday here, but made it on the second. It seemed to stretch for ages! With all sorts of stalls selling all sorts of items. A good place to loose things I would suspect.

A local delicacy

After seeing the local items for sale at El Rastro I made my way to the little food outlets surrounding Plaza Major. My housemate, Miguel had recommended that I try a local delicacy called bocadillo de calamares, which is basically a baguette with fried calamri on the inside. This is quite odd given that Madrid is land locked and not really thought of for seafood.

Well I must say, with a beer in hand this thing goes down a treat! Yummy! And as they do in Spain I stood at the counter – ensuring no one else could get through to order, and enjoyed my sandwich and beer, whilst observing the room.

Another great spot for tapas is the Museo del Jamon. These are everywhere, so I suspect a chain and usually have people spilling out of them. Their big draw card is that can you usually order a beer and get a small place of salami or Jamon on the side. Beers are €1 and you can get a decent baguette with jamon for €1 as well!

Gin and cake

On a website called spotted by locals – this is a great site for finding cool cafes, bars, things to do etc with a local touch, I came across a restaurant / bar that apparently did gin and cake deals on a Sunday afternoon.

They didn’t seem to have any deals, which was disappointing. But by this point I was now sold on the gin and cake combo, so I ordered a deconstructed oreo cake and a gin and tonic made with a Swedish gin. It was a great way to spend a Sunday arvo.

Real Madrid

Also on Sunday was the start of the football season here and Real Madrid were playing Sunday night away. I think great! What an experience this will be, I’ll find a pub with the match and join in with the locals. When the guy on reception at the hostel told me he wasn’t really into football and didn’t know where to go, that should’ve been my first warning.

The only places where there were a number of people, max 10 I reckon, watching the match was in the betting shops. Most places I could find didn’t have the match playing, nor many people watching.

Eventually I found myself in a small tapas place and I got to sit right under the TV. I had tapas, a couple of beers and watched on with the owner who didn’t speak any English. After 90 mins the full time buzzer went and no one had scored. I really don’t see the point in this game haha. Oh well.

Spotted by locals
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