Our flight from LA to Madrid was long (10 hours), but it went well and we were eager to get to our first stop, so it went by fairly quickly. The free wine with dinner didn’t hurt either…
Once arriving in Madrid we took a taxi out to our Airbnb, which was near Mercado de San Miguel. We booked this Airbnb with not much knowledge of the neighborhoods, but we definitely lucked out with this place. The Airbnb was a cute studio apartment on the 5th floor of a fairly modern building. We tried to walk up all 5 flights every day, as opposed to taking the elevator, to keep up with all the tapas we’ve been trying. Here’s a great view of the city from our Airbnb:
Once arriving and settling down, we wanted to take the opportunity to explore the city a bit, so we walked through a few of the well-known areas, including Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor, both of which were walking distance from our Airbnb.
Puerta Del Sol:
Panaramic View of Plaza Mayor:
Plaza Mayor:
On our first night we decided to enjoy some tapas and check out the Mercado de San Miguel, which was right across the street from us. This market was bustling with locals and tourists, and made for a very cool experience on our first night. We enjoyed various tapas from the different vendors within the markets, of course starting off with some delicious meat & cheese.
Later that night we tried the famous “churros con chocolate“, which we felt were OK. But I guess we’re just not big churro fans…We obviously still finished them though, didn’t want them to go to waste!
Our 2nd day in Madrid was spent checking out all the big “tourist attractions”. Of course we had to make a morning stop at Starbucks before our day began…
We spent the entire morning at the Prado Museum, which was pretty incredible. We paid the additional 6 euros to get the “Audio Guides”, which helped us learn the history about each painting we saw. Since there are hundreds of pieces of European art in this museum, we focused on finding what they call the “masterpieces/originals” that are located in the museum. A majority of the pieces were by Velazquez, Goya, El Greco and Titian, all of which were beautiful. Photographs of the paintings were not allowed, but Andrew and I managed to sneak a few in throughout the museum…
In Spain, it’s very popular to have a bigger lunch “Menu Del Dia”, take a siesta in the late afternoon, and then have a light tapas dinner around 10ish, so we tried to work this into our daily routine. After leaving the Prado we headed to El Diario, where we experienced the “Menu Del Dia”, which consisted of a salad appetizer, main entree (chicken for me, steak for Andrew), and ice cream for dessert. Not bad.
After lunch we went to check out El Retiro Park, which is a beautiful park right behind the Prado Museum. A lot of greenery everywhere and some great running paths.
After El Retiro Park, we continued our day of sightseeing with a stop at the Royal Palace. The current royal family lives a few miles down the road from this palace, but this 24 room palace boasts some pretty incredible rooms and decor from past royal families.
All of that sightseeing left us pretty exhausted, so we went back to our place and took a bit of a “siesta” and then went out that night for our very own “tapas/bar crawl”. We explored an area known as Cava Baja, which included a few tapas and lots of sangria (cervezas for Andrew).
The next day we started our morning out for a run through El Retiro Park. We then decided to make our own breakfast & lunch from some items we picked up at the local market. Afterwards we went to a local Irish pub so Andrew could catch the Manchester United/Manchester City soccer game. It doesn’t matter where we are, Andrew will always find a good place to catch a game, and we ended up coming back to this pub to watch the Chelsea game the next day.
Real Madrid was playing that afternoon after the MU/Man City game, so we tried to find a local sports bar to watch the game at, but it was actually extremely hard to find a local, lively bar that was playing the game. We ended up coming back to our place since we were feeling a bit of the jet lag and took another afternoon siesta, but not before checking out Gran Via, a large shopping area.
We ended up going back out around 10pm for some tapas and made our first stop at Bodega de la Ardosa, which is known for their Tortilla Espanola. It was quite possibly the best tapa we had in all of Madrid. We HIGHLY recommend you check out this cute tapas bar if you ever find yourself in Madrid. It was very authentic and the drinks were good too. After a couple more tapas/sangria stops, we headed to the well-known, 7 story club, Kapital, around 1:30AM. Apparently you shouldn’t arrive any time before 1:30ish, as you’ll find the club pretty empty.
Descriptions of the 7 Levels…
We stayed for a few hours, checked out the numerous dance floors and left around 4AM. All in all, a good night and felt like we were in college again. We were pretty proud of ourselves making it out past 4AM, so we treated ourselves with some delicious pizza before heading home.
The next morning I actually made it to a local spin class down the street. I wasn’t too sure what the instructor was saying throughout the entirety of the class, but tried to imitate those around me. After our late night, Andrew decided not to accompany me on this one…
We were looking forward to lunch on this day because we had made reservations at Botin, which is the oldest restaurant in the world (according to the Guinness Book of Records), and it was definitely quite the experience. The service was amazing and the food was delicious. We shared some sangria and their most popular item, the Suckling Pig. Doesn’t sound extremely appetizing, but it was very good.
After lunch we walked over to the local flea market and ended up picking up a few goodies from the local vendors.
We spent our last night in Madrid checking out Templo de Debod. It offers a pretty incredible view at sunset, where a ton of locals & tourists gather around to watch. It was the perfect way to end our last night in Madrid.
Farewell Madrid – we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our stay!
Andrew + Allison Around the World 