F&G: Madrid

On Sunday, we took a quick trip (Sunday afternoon to Monday morning) to Madrid to meet up with some family friends from the U.S. They were on a twelve-day tour of Barcelona, Valencia, and Madrid and we wanted to see them while missing as few days as possible of Grace’s class.

Madrid is a beautiful 2.5-hour train ride from Salamanca. The route starts off in the plains and then crosses the Sistema Central mountains before dropping back down towards Madrid. There are some gorgeous views from the train of olive trees and steep slopes. One of the amazing sights was all the ancient looking stone walls that dissected the landscape, even out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

We planned on trying to get to some of the main sights in Madrid before meeting our friends for dinner. Our first stop was going to be lunch at the highly recommended Mercado de San Miguel. We battled through crowds of tourists on our walk there and upon entering the market discovered 1) that it was impossibly packed with tourists, and 2) everything was ridiculously expensive. For example, a kilo of cherries in the market was 12 euros when the most expensive we saw in Salamanca and at other grocery store in Madrid was only 3 or 4 Euros per kilo. We turned around immediately and left without getting anything, making our way onto much less-crowded streets. Grace found a delicious restaurant for lunch that was recommended in the Lonely Planet and quite near our hotel.

After seeing all the crowds in and around the market, we scrapped our plan to see the Reina Sofia or Prado museums. We realized that it was going to be a very unpleasant experience if we could get in at all. Instead, we had a lot of fun wandering around the neighborhood, called Chueca. It was full of trendy clothing stores and restaurants. In the evening, before dinner, we walked down to the Prado and Reina Sofia to see the scene after the museums closed.

Our friends chose a restaurant a few blocks from our hotel that served a variety of tapas. It was fun catching up with them and hearing about their trip.

The next morning, we went for a brief walk through the gigantic Parque del Buen Retiro before catching a morning train back to Salamanca. We’ll have another afternoon in Madrid the day before we leave so we may try again to get into those museums.