Monday, March 21, 2016

Madrid, Spain

lunch spot
A short 45 minute bus ride from Toledo to Madrid I feel like I´m going to like this city more than I expected.

I had lunch at this cute wine/cheese/meat store.  Super cute and low key, where I was able to do some planning for the rest of my trip.
lunch first day


Doofan´s apartment

Joy Club


at the club
Then, I walked around the city a bit and got ready to meet Doofan, a girl I ran track with at Kutztown University, who recently moved to Madrid.  I met her at her apartment and got to hear the awesome love story on how she ended up meeting her now boyfriend in Spain and ended up moving here a few months ago.

We ended up going to a club called Joy after her boyfriend made us some delicious strawberry gin and tonic drinks.  As he explained, in Spain clubs don´t really get going until 330am-4am.  We ended up having a good time and staying until 3 or so but couldn´t hang/didn´t really want to hang with the late late nighters, which were waiting in line to get in when we left.
Plaza meyor


yummy tapas

tapas time







The next morning I headed out to Plaza Mayor and the El Rastro the flea market which was bit overwhelming.  I thought Times Square had a massive amount of people.  This seemed worse.  I hung around for a bit, then took the closest side street, which was a lot less crowded.

I ended up finding a cute lunch spot in the neighbhorhood of La Latina, where you can sit at a table and the servers come around with platters of tapas and you just take whichever one you want, then pay for how many you had at the end.  I had some great ones, mushroom/bacon/cheese, cod/potato/cheese aoli, 3 cheese, spring rolls.  So good.

Museo del Prado
Meat shop
I then continued walking to the Mercado de San Miguel and La Iglesia de San Adres.  After all this walking a siesta was in order. 

In the evening, I went to the Museo de Prado, which has one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 19th century.  Many pieces from Goya, Velazquez, Greco, Rubens and Bosch seemed to be the highlights.  It was a beautiful museum.  I´m not super into art museums, but was told this was unquestionably the best single collection of Spanish art and couldn´t be missed and I´m glad I went! 



painting in Museo De Prado
 

No comments:

Post a Comment