Spanish Trip Diary, Part 1: Madrid

Added 18 March 2006. Pictures and stories from our trip to Spain, from February 28 to March 10.

I've decided to organize this more by category than day-by-day notes. The plan is to have three pages:

Royal Palace at night

Doesn't this look like a postcard? But it's a Jean original view of Madrid's Royal Palace. Too bad Madrid is so ugly, eh? :-)

Transportation and hotel notes

Because Sandy was sick, I was unusually anxious about leaving on this vacation. Still, Jean got me out the door, which is good since the traffic got somewhat tied up by an accident. Jean had found a new airport parking service that we ended up being very happy with: it was called Skyway.

We were on British Airways. No real complaints about this airline. The staff was very nice—the pilot for a flight over was quite the entertainer, really—seats were relatively roomy; food was not quite Air France but was still pretty good; good selection of movies: I got to see Capote, bringing my total of Oscar-nominated films seen to four. And despite short layovers, they didn't lose our luggage.

Heathrow Airport, however, was another story. Connecting through London, we had to get ourselves from Terminal 1 to 4. The only way to do that was to wait for this Airport bus. Which just wasn't coming. More and more people gathered to wait; no buses. People were getting dangerously close to their departure time, and becoming increasingly abusive to the one poor airport staff guy in the vicinity. One woman near the front passed out. It was pretty ugly.

Anyway. Buses did eventually resume, and after a bracing bout of running through the terminal, we made our connecting flight. Ten people did not, however, and we had to wait while their luggage was removed.

Madrid Airport was seriously one of the most beautiful airports I've ever seen. And it was sunny there, which we hadn't yet realized would be the norm for the trip. Getting through Customs was smooth, as seems to be typical with Europe. We took the metro to our hotel for 1 Euro each—wish Canadian airports were anywhere that easy to get to.

Our hotel was right in the middle of downtown, so incredibly convenient. We were on the fourth floor, which made for regular exercise, as we were dubious about the old elevator. Room was a reasonable size for Europe, and all perfectly fine. We didn't spend that much time there.

Sights

The Prado

The Prado is the biggest of Madrid's five art museums. We followed it with an audiotour, which did help us get a lot more out of it, because much of the descriptions were in Spanish. But we found its non-chronological organization kind of strange; you'd see early work by a painter, then later, then earlier again... It was somewhat odd. But definitely some nice pieces—a lot of de Goya, a quite fascinating one called The Garden of Delights by Hieronymous Bosch (1450—1516).

Painter in Prado

A common sight at the Prado: Someone working to reproduce an art work

City of Tolédo

Tolédo used to be the capital of Madrid; now the entire city is preserved as a UNESCO site. We spent an enjoyable day there touring. Jean enjoyed the many knives, swords, and antique guns available for sale (for a peaceful man, he's strangely enamored of weapons), but resisted buying any. Most impressive is their huge, incredibly elaborate Cathedral; unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take any pictures of that. You'll just have to go see it yourself.

Outside of Tolédo Cathedral. You'll have to imagine the inside yourself.

But we did take the tourist tram ride all around the city, which allowed us to get some nice views.

City view of Tolédo

The Royal Palace

Spain still has a royal family, but they no longer live in the Royal Palace. It's just used for functions now, and for tourists to visit. It's worth going to; very elaborate rooms. In one room there was the world's largest single collection of Stradivarius instruments: four pieces. They are quite lovely looking. We got stuck behind a tour group on our visit, which was pretty annoying. But once we managed to get by them, we enjoyed gawking at the riches.

The Royal Palace at dusk

A view inside the Royal Palace

Activities

Just walking around

Madrid had beautiful architecture everywhere and is a very compact, walkable city, so we spent a lot of time just ambling about. (It was also sunny every day.) Grande Via had a lot of shops, so that was one area of interest, though we didn't buy much. We also enjoyed the various "plaza" areas, such as Plaza Mayor.

One side of Plaza Mayor...

"Ooh la la" close up of the same

A couple famous Spaniards we ran into

Tapas bar hopping

We are quite proud of ourselves that we did do a little tapas bar tour one night, ordering in Spanish, eating standing up, visiting different establishments, and ending up a little tipsy. Our first stop was a small but boisterous place with a shrimp specialty—very yummy, especially with shrimp sizzling in olive oil and garlic. When we asked for la cuenta, we were given a coupon for another nearby place, so it became the next stop. There we got a sweet wine, and ordered an asparagus dish. Our last stop was the Museo de jamon, or Ham museum. Where we had ham, believe it or not! They do a good job with ham there.

The food report

While we were prepped for having to put up with secondhand smoke, one pleasant surprise was that Spain had passed legislation in December 2005 requiring all restaurants to declare themselves as non-smoking, allowing smoking, or have a non-smoking section. And it wasn't that difficult to find non-smoking restaurants in Madrid; these were often among the most popular places.

A less pleasant surprise was that it wasn't quite as easy to get a good meal as we'd found in the other European countries we'd visited recently (France, Portugal—even Scotland). For example, the paella we had at one place that looked very nice was just too salty, with mediocre mussels. The clams and langostinos were good, but it became tedious having to shell them all as you ate. It scared us off paella for the rest of the trip. A few other meals we had were equally uninspired.

On the other hand, we also had our best meal of the trip here (on my birthday, fortunately; unfortunately, one of the few places where the non-smoking sign was ignored by several patrons). It was a four-course menu:

Cold foie gras with mango—quite nice
Vegetable tempura with papaya—fantastic. Nicely crisp, delicious.
Duck magret (Jean)
Monkfish with pumpkin (me—hey, it came with a vegetable!)
Assortment of small desserts: ice cream with chocolate sauce, brownie, cheesecake, hazelnut mousse (mmm)

We were also quite blown away by the mazapan of Tolédo. Forget about that slightly tough almond paste we get here; this mazapan (no "r") come in many forms, many light and pastry-like, and all incredibly delicious. The little smoke-free Cafe Museum also had good foie gras (Jean) and cod with pine nuts and raisins (Cathy); our lunch in Tolédo was also successful, especially my quail and Jean's rice pudding.

What was weird generally was the lack of vegetables; if you didn't specifically order a salad or a side of asparagus or mushrooms, you often didn't get vegetables. Also notable was the absence of any sort of grain bread—it was always fluffy white—plus the fact that it bread was never served with butter. If you were lucky, you got olive oil.

The wine and coffee were generally good, even in the establishments where the food was disappointing. The hot chocolate was thick like a melted Hershey bar—too much for me, but Jean seemed to like it.

Observations

A lot of fur coats. Way more than you see here. And Jean claims the old women in fur coats are pushy.
Temperatures ranged from 3 to 11 degrees. Not really fur coat weather, but you certainly needed a spring coat and maybe a sweater.
Jean observed that there seemed to be a lot of track pants too (on the younger people).
Couples making out in public places. You also see that quite a bit more.
Street performers whose act is to stay remarkably still. They move when you give them money. Some interesting costumes on these guys (and gals).
Way more men than women wait staff. Who knows why.
Meals are taken later. Lunch might not be available before 1:00. Supper likely won't be available before 8:00, and it might be 9:00. And their breakfasts are small.
Daily we'd see this long lineup of people outside what looked like a hostel. We never figured that one out. But even more mysterious was this incredibly long lineup of people one day outside one of the government ministries. It was crazy. We couldn't even guess what for.
The city streets and sidewalks are cleaned frequently—a fact we appreciated even more later, when visiting less diligent cities.
Policemen everywhere, in cars, walking down the street, on motorcycles... Don't know if that should have made us feel more or less safe.

Spain, Part 2: Andalusia—Seville and Cordoba