A bit of music to set the mood
A trip to Spain was not at the top of anyone’s list, BUT it was the one destination we could fly direct, so Spain it was.
Note: If you can avoid a layover in any Blue Zone, or the UK, avoid it. Example: Chicago makes international travelers leave the secure domestic section of the airport and go through TSA again to get into the International terminal. If you don’t have 3-4 hours to waste on this farcical theater, avoid left-coast airports. We touched down in Madrid, Spain for a nine-day tour. Border control was no issue. I guess the EU might be good for some…uh, nevermind. The taxi driver refused the name of the hotel and asked for the street address, so make sure you have that handy. As of this writing, taxis <https://www.esmadrid.com/en/madrid-taxi > have a €30 flat rate from the airport, and we checked into Hotel Mayorazgo.
The room for three was cramped. The “double bed” was actually two twins pushed together, but made up separately. The Amazon had to sleep on the lower tier of a fold-away bunk bed. For €300 a night I expected better, but the place was clean and breakfast was included. Best of all the sheets were not “microfiber” (aka shredded plastic) like in the States, so sleeping was not disrupted by that Saran Wrap sweaty feeling in the wee hours.
Then things took a Hunter S. Thompson turn for the bizarre. Almost every hotel I have ever visited in the world had a display of brochures promoting all of the places tourists can go leave their money. It did not exist! No pamphlets in screaming colors begging for attention. Eventually, the Amazon found a QR code attached to the wall that lead to a website with some very skeletal touristy stuff.
TRAVELER’S NOTE:
Restaurant menus have started going to QR codes with links to online menus. The classic menu by the door still exists, but the trend is to QRs, even at the door. Many places do not have free/easily accessibly WiFi. The Amazon had to use a Starbucks’ Wifi from across the street from De Maria to open their menu. Get a good roaming data plan before you go.
The immediate realization from the tourist website is Spanish culture and history have been banished to the dusty corners in favor of portraying Madrid as a cosmopolitan Mc-Euro sort of experience.
“If the problem is Spain, the answer is Europe.” These sage words came from one of our tour guides named German (pronounced “Herman”). Apparently in the rush to get Spain out of economic doldrums, they went hard Euro, and left everything else to survive as best it could. A very sad trade off in this author’s opinion.
If you want to shop in all of the same stores you can shop in at home, Madrid is your place to go.
Tourism located, we proceeded accordingly:
MADRID
Madrid’s main drag is the “Grand Via”. Learn this road as many things connect to it, or you can use it to get where you are going. Good restaurants and shows.
The main shopping district is “Puerta del Sol”. There are a few others including shopping malls, but this seems to be the main one.
“From Madrid with Love” is a chain of souvenir stores with outlets all over the city. Each store carries things different from the others, but overall there is little variety in their offerings. Plenty of mom & pop souvenir stores compete with “From Madrid”, and they have some variety on offer.
Historically, Spain is famous for their leather goods. Nice handbags and other leather goods are to be had. Expect to pay Stateside prices in Euros. You will find a better selection of locally made products outside of Madrid.
Churros in Spain are not coated in cinnamon and sugar like in the US. They are eaten with chocolate sauce. This is a genuine disservice to the footlong donut concept.
If you see a sign for “Dick Waffles” it is NOT a churro shop. It means you have wandered into one of the gayborhoods, and the waffles are indeed waffles shaped like human genitalia.
Chorizo & Jamón (Prosciutto) come in all of the flavors of the… pork byproduct. Shops offer Jamón with the hoof still attached. The variety of chorizo boggles the mind, and it was all delicious.
Bull fighting still available, but falling out of favor in the modern world. If you want to see one, buy tickets online. You may have better luck outside of Madrid.
The locals start in Spanish even if they speak English. Nobody was actively hostile, but they will make you work for it. The folks who did not speak English were still pleasant to deal with. Anyone who can manage a vacation in Mexico can manage Spain.
We found some unexpected treasures in the form of two shops.
La Violeta is located off Puerta del Sol. This shop specializes in sugar coated violet flowers, a truly unique gift option. The flavor of the candy is quite pleasant.
Vicens Torrones Artisanos sells Spanish marzipan/nougat in an amazing range of styles and flavors. This candy is a popular thing to serve at holidays and parties. Vincens has multiple locations across the city. Free samples are available. The candy is vacuum packed and traveled well in our carry-on. Be sure to chill it before opening to make it easy to cut and serve.
Madrid City Tours (aka Julia’s Travel) operates a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour service that runs along Historical and Modern routes. We love the hop-on-hop-off concept as a first day activity in a new place. These tours allow us to get the lay of the land without requiring too much from jet-lagged bodies and minds. Edinburgh, Prague, and Dublin have all been winners. The Madrid recorded tour program lacked context, and comes across a bit Hillbilly.
“Y’all see that building on the right? No? Well that’s because it ain’t there no more. It was replaced in 1973 with the current building, but that original building was…”
Fair warning: Madrid City Tour bus tickets are only good until 22:00 on the day of purchase. All of the other services we used were 24 hours from the time of purchase. This 24-hour ticket allowed us to get oriented on Day 1and pick out things to see along the bus route. On Day 2 we took the bus to those places and saved ourselves some steps in the process. Make sure you understand how the tickets work.
We purchased other adventures from Julia’s Travel
Guided tour of the Prado Art Museum/Museo del Prado is Madrid’s fine art gallery, and well worth the time if art is your thing. We bought a guided tour from Julia’s Travel, and it was a good investment. It would have taken an entire day, maybe two, to get through the entire collection, but the 90 minutes we spent hit the high points, and we got to see the Spanish crown jewels to boot.
Fun & Tickets sells day trips to a variety of locations across Spain.
We purchased day-trip bus tours to Segovia/Avila and Toledo. The guides were friendly and professional. Even with accented English, they were easily understood and willing to take questions.
Wear good walking shoes with thick soles and ankle support for these trips. Mediaeval cities have the bane of all street hikers: cobblestones. We are not talking about shaped cobblestones with an upper face doing its best to pretend to be flat. These are river rocks set in cement. There is not a flat space anywhere.
Segovia has a beautiful Roman aqueduct running through town. The Amazon was in full “Classical Culture Geek Mode” as we walked beneath this structure that dates back to the second century CE. The rest of the town was lovely.
Alcazar de Segovia Castle is a UNESCO Heritage site. It has a much more open/airy feel than other castles of the period. The Moorish décor and architecture is gorgeous. It was the first time the Traveler felt like he was really in Spain.
Avila is a mediaeval town with the original defensive walls still well maintained. Climbing the wall will cost you €5.
Bus day-trips tend to come with a “stop for lunch” along the way. In this case, the “lunch” included with our ticket was a drink (wine, beer, soda) and a single tapas plate consisting of a wedge of omelette. Omelette in Spain is more like quiche in consistency and presentation. Everything beyond this nibble was on your own tab. Recall that the Traveler prefers hotels with breakfast buffets? Yeah, that’s why.
Toledo is where you meet historical Spain. Very mediaeval feeling in the same way we experienced Edinburgh, Scotland The spousal unit found a few nice leather handbags she could not live without, and the Traveler found the most coveted souvenir, the classic Spanish Navaja.
Now I have to dust off my copy of The Manual of the Baratero
Yellow Tours is a competitor to Madrid City/Julia’s Travel.
Flamenco Torres Bermejas (https://www.torresbermejas.com/en)
In an attempt to see some smidge of Spanish culture, we booked tickets to a Flamenco show through Yellow Tours. The performance was about a ten-minute walk from our hotel and right off Grand Via. The ticket options were “Drinks”, “Tapas”, and “Menu” with prices increasing accordingly. We opted for the “Tapas” level, and found ourselves seated at a table actually touching the edge of the stage. To say the setting was “intimate” was like using The Station nightclub as an ideal business model. After we were seated, I realized our only exit in an emergency was up onto the stage and out through the stage entrance. This assumes there was a separate door back there. The show itself should have come with warning labels. Flamenco is a very athletic dancing style, and we rapidly found out we were sitting in the “splash zone” when one of the dancers made a sudden turn. If Elvis could have replicated this move, the first three rows of his audience would have passed out instantly and he would have saved a fortune in towels. The drink options were beer, wine, or soda. The Tapas came in three servings Bread, Jamón, omelette, and fried cheese, followed by Paella, and the meal concluded with some form of dessert pudding. We were not sure what the pudding was. It was not quite flan, and not quite crème brulee. The dancer’s sweat did nothing to improve the flavor.
National Museum of Anthropology
This type of museum is my cup of tea, and this one did not disappoint. The museum is free on Sundays, but get in early. We went in the afternoon, and they chased us out before we got to take in everything. The Amazon was just getting started in the Roman gallery when the 10-minute announcement was played.
NOTE: Museums require backpacks to be checked at the door, and they have X-ray and metal detectors, so plan accordingly. The lockers they provide require a €1 coin to release the key. You get the coin back when you return the key. Just make sure you have at least one before heading out.
With all of the (Expletive Deleted) morons wrecking priceless bits of history with soup, paint, and glue just to make a political point, I did not mind the security measures.
No, the Egyptians were not Lost Travelers, nor did they try to conquer Spain. This temple is the result of the Aswan Dam project <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam >. The temple complex was going to be flooded as the water rose, so the main temple was disassembled and moved to Madrid. Entry is free unless you count standing in the sun on hot pavement for hours to get in. Only ten people are admitted at a time for a maximum of thirty minutes. If you really geek out on Ancient Egypt, this is worth a stop, just be prepared to wait.
This place is a model maker’s paradise. A €3 “donation” gets you in, and the presentation is very understandable with signage in Spanish and English. This was where the hidden history was very evident to anyone familiar with Spanish colonialism. Only a pair of slave manacles and a native dugout canoe hint at the omissions. The ship models are excellent and accompanied by period artifacts and explanations of naval architecture from the early medieval period to the present day.
Buy tickets online in advance! This cannot be emphasized enough. The line to buy tickets at the door was fifty yards long. The prepaid line was maybe five yards. We were inside in less than 2 minutes.
Admission covers roughly twenty rooms of the palace and the Royal Armory Guided and audio tours are available, but we found the signage adequate to our needs. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed, and the bums don’t even sell a coffee table book or postcard sets containing photos of the artifacts. The Royal Armory was everything the name implies. The artistry on the equipment was exquisite. One cuirass had multiple bullet strikes on the front and a very deep one on the back. Not one ball penetrated, but the owner was probably sporting some amazing bruises, if not broken ribs, from the impacts.
Dining in Spain falls into two main forms, “Tablecloth” and “Tapas”.
Tapas – €17/person
Tapas are “appetizers” eaten with drinks, and it is the standard pub food for Spain. Every bar serves tapas, and the menu is pretty similar everywhere. If you plan to make a meal out of it, order a bunch of dishes to taste a variety of things. Larger dishes like paella ) could be a light meal for one person. Paella is like a seafood-rice stir-fry flavored with saffron. Pretty tasty. Just expect it to be a light supper.
Sadly, the Tapas place we visited in Dublin, Ireland was significantly better than what we had in Spain.
Tablecloth – €35/person
These are restaurants with real table linen. We only mostly looked like international hoboes, but we were never turned away based on a dress code.
A tablecloth seems to come with a before-dinner snort of house wine/champagne/liqueur and gazpacho, an after-dinner palate cleanser, and a thanks-for-stopping-by shot of cognac as you pay your bill.
The menus are organized as Appetizers, Salad (ensalada), Protein, and Vegetables. The protein does not come with any default veggies. If you order a steak, you get a steak…on a plate. You will not see a “steak and baked potato” combination like you do in the US. We ordered our individual proteins with a couple of veggie plates to share.
Sangria and local beer were the beverages of choice on this expedition. The servers were bummed we were not ordering their expensive bottles, but we sampled several house variations of sangria with no ill effects. The beer was a basic heavy wheat with a flavor similar to Modelo or Tecate in the States. Easily drinkable on a hot day. Asador de Aranda surprised us with after dinner shots called “chupito”. The waiter would only tell us the drink consists of dark rum and lime juice. Seems some serious experimentation will be needed to recreate this little sipper.
Places we tried:
GastroVía 61 (Hotel Mayorazgo) This is the hotel restaurant, and it seemed like a Spanish-fusion, but I’m not sure exactly what it was supposed to be fused with. The food was tasty, and portions reasonable for the price.
Parilla El Goucho (Grand Via, Madrid) Argentinian Bar-B-Que – Get the “BBQ Plate” (priced per person). This is a sizzling iron griddle stacked with steak, sausage, and chicken. Not quite Texas de Brazil , but very satisfying. The dessert menu offered a dish called “Tropical Bird” which turned out to be half of a pine apple stuffed with crème brulee. It is highly recommended.
El Senador This was a bit hard to find because it is on a side street that runs towards the Royal Palace. The entrance is through a bar, and you sit in a basement space. Grilled lambchops and Cochinillo asado (roast suckling pig) are the specialties. Segovia has a statue dedicated to the “ceremony” of cutting the roast pigs. According to legend, a chef forgot his knife when presenting the dish to a nobleman. His helper suggested that the pigs were tender enough to cut with the edge of a plate, so using a plate to cut roast pigs is now a thing.
La Toscana This is classic Italian food. After a really long day, we wanted something close to the hotel, and this won the prize. Food was good, but nothing spectacular.
Asador de Aranda A steakhouse that cooks in a massive oven right in the main dining room. We had grilled steaks and chops. This place fills up quick for dinner. We bagged the last unreserved table, so plan ahead.
De Maria Another Argentine dining experience. Ribeyes and grilled chicken were the mains followed by a lovely flan. This was the only restaurant we visited that offered this classic dessert.
As a whole the trip was a success, except the Traveler never made it to Seville to get what’s left of his haircut. I really wanted a picture with the barber.
Hogleg Press 