Madrid, Spain

I wanted to just put “Madrid” as the title, but for those of you who might not know, it really is in Spain. We spent our first 5 nights in the country here, taking day trips out to surrounding towns, but otherwise exploring this vibrant and huge city.

We landed in the early morning and dropped our bags in a storage shop just down the street from the apartment we were renting {how handy was that? do all big cities have such places? we usually have a car and explore outside of cities, so we’ve never had need for that :)} We then headed into the Plaza Mayor (the main plaza in any self-respecting city) and enjoyed a fashionably late (but right on time for Madrid) breakfast, sitting outside, enjoying the morning bustle around us.

Plaza Mayor was pretty empty then…

…but foot traffic picked up as the day went on.

We later wandered over near the Royal Palace…

…and happened to catch the changing of the guard!

This occurs twice a week at random times (actually a 3 hour window is given, and we happened to walk up at just the right moment).

There were a decent number of tourists out, but nothing felt crowded to us (other than the subway at times) -

That is the Almudena Cathedral which was sits across from the Palace and was just built beginning in 1879.

The Palace courtyard:

Another angle -

Inside, the colors were gorgeous -

… and the pipe organ was eye-catching (be on the lookout for much older pipe organs in later posts).

We collapsed early that evening and then woke up refreshed to continue exploring.

Now, the rest of this post is a little out of chronological order, as we took 2 different day trips to nearby cities, but I just wanted to include all our Madrid stops and wandering in this one post.

Our next day of wandering landed us in Retiro Park, which is an enormous greenspace on the eastern edge of the city. I wanted to see the Crystal Palace -

… which was built in 1887 for the Exposition of the Phillipines. It’s some pretty awesome wrought iron architecture.

Also in Retiro Park was this lake, on which boating is an apparently common pastime.

The park was a great place to spend a gorgeous fall day.

Strolling back to our apartment, we passed some striking monuments -

…and buildings…

…and enjoyed the bustle of the big city.

Our last day in Madrid, we visited 2 museums and the Royal Palace.

As you can see from the picture above, it was a good day to be inside for most of it. Once we were admitted to the personal rooms inside, we weren’t allowed to take pictures…

…but that entrance hall and staircase was fair game…

… as was that receiving hall above.

I’ll close with an example of tapas that we had several nights as our evening “meal” after our large meal at 2 pm. If you’re in the know, you don’t go out before 8:30 pm or later for these bites and a cocktail or wine. Salud!