Madrid - Spain (May 2019)

We ventured on the Calle Serrano just for a walk to kill time and found that this street is full of fashion stores residential flats on the floors above.

Our walk on Calle Serrano culminated at the Puerta de Alcala monument (built in 1778) in the Independence Plaza. It was interesting to see that dinner time starts very late in the evening, like 8 p.m. Outdoor restaurants gets crowded only after 8 p.m. and that was on a week day.

The hotel that we chose to stay – Vincci Via 66 – was in the heart of the city, located in Gran Via and Madrid could be explored easily by walk or public transport. So, we decided not to rent a car for this trip. Gran via street has several theaters and is sometimes called the ‘Spanish Broadway’. 

The accessibility by bus and train is very good. Sometimes we felt that the train, the ease of navigating and the cleanliness of the stations are much better than what one could experience in NYC. We walked to the Royal Palace which was less than a kilometer by walk. It was a nice sunny day and perfect for the walk. The Royal Palace also had the exhibits of the armory in a separate section. There was an option to buy a combination ticket for Palace + Royal Kitchen or Palace + Armory. We bought the Palace + Armory. The grandeur of the Royal Palace cannot be easily explained. This Palace is apparently not just a museum, but still functional in the sense that the Royals receive special guests here on occasions. As recent as 2014, the abdication of King Juan Carlos I and crowning of King Felipe VI took place in this Palace.

The grand staircase in the entrance has two majestic lion sculptures on either side, adding to the grandeur. The paintings, sculptures, tapestries and themes of each room was so mind-boggling. Most paintings had religious reference. Paintings on the ceiling were the most amazing and elaborate telling an entire story, with a lot of characters referenced in religious texts. Too bad that they wouldn’t let anyone take pictures of any of that. There were too many guards monitoring this all along! Only the hallways and building facades can be captured by images. Some of the woodwork is so amazing that one cannot even see the seams and joints because of the creative painting and art work masking them.

The throne room is literally the room where the royal throne is and is used on special occasions to receive and honor guests. Apparently, this room has not seen any changes for more than 200 years since King Charles III. There are rooms for each occasion, King, Queen and even a separate room for the Crown and scepter.
Then, we went to the armory, which is supposed to be the largest collection of weapons in entire Europe. The intricate art work and the ornamental nature of some of the armors showed clearly that these are only for ceremonial purposes and not for combat regions! It was interesting to note that the gunsmiths of those days had a good background in watchmaking. Apparently, the highly technical and intricate designing needed for watches came handy for these people to work on guns!

Source: Wikipedia

Teatro Royal (Royal Theater) just opposite the Palace is a theater that hosts shows even today. The theater has a royal gallery and the many special rooms adjacent to the main performance hall had wonderful paintings.

The vegetarian paella with Sangria, after this, tasted really good and it gave enough fuel for our further walk through Madrid.

The Plaza Mayor and the streets around that area was so crowded that it felt like there was some kind of a carnival or something! Apparently, it coincided with the San Isidro Festival time during which it was local holidays. 

The Mercado de San Miguel is located in the heart of the city center. This historic market is not only beautiful but also full of food from around the country. 

One of the notable landmarks there is the Basilica of San Miguel. Don’t let the outside facade underestimate the grandeur inside. It wasn’t a huge church, but the interiors with tall ceilings were very impressive. 

Then, we walked to the Puerta del Sol and checked out the Plaza de la Villa on the way. Plaza de la Villa is apparently another well preserved historical monument from the 15^th century. 

Puerta del Sol area probably was the most crowded plaza that we saw in our trip with many options to eat, street artists, shopping streets and so on. 

The gelato place Amorino was amazing with traditional gelato, gelato in macaroons and several interesting ways of eating gelato! We decided to finish our dinner there at the Wok to Walk – oriental food in the center of Madrid 😊

We walked back to the hotel. With streets full of activity and historical buildings around, it would be a waste if one doesn’t walk the streets of Madrid and choose a taxi!

El Retiro Park is kind of Central Park of NYC, except that it seems to have more inside the park. It had a museum that had some modern art, a crystal palace with some interesting sculptures, an amazing rose garden and a garden with freely roaming peacocks! The park also had a small lake in the middle and swamped with people around the park because of the beautiful sunny weather on the day. The rose garden was in full bloom with every possible variety of rose in the park.

Then, we went to the Prado Museum and to our surprise, the entrance was free on that day! One can easily spend a whole day or more at Prado. The paintings in Prado were too many and ranged from work done as early as 15^th century till 19^th century. This museum is supposed to have the largest and most notable collections of El Greco, Francisco Goya, Hieronymus Bosch and Diego Velazquez. There was a huge crowd, always, in front of ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Bosch – this painting is on three panels depicting a complex concept of birth, death and the life in-between, that decides the fate of after-life. Prado also displays the famous ‘La maja desnuda’, that did not have any religious or mythological meaning/reference for a painting from that period and hence was confiscated during the Spanish Inquisition for it was considered profane. The museum also displays a number of notable works for Diego Velazquez, who has done several portraits of the rulers during the 17^th century. He was also an inspiration to several later period realists and impressionists including Manet, Picasso and Dali.

We booked a whole day tour of Toledo, but the tour operator canceled this tour because there weren’t enough people in the tour and gave us an option to take Toledo and Segovia both on the same day. For the lack of time to rebook ourselves to our choice, we said okay. We knew it was going to be a long day, but didn’t want to miss out visiting these two UNESCO protected cities. We got to the Ventas station to get on the bus. Little did we know that this station location is where the Plaza de Toros is, where the bullfights happen. It was early in the morning and there wasn’t much crowd there, but when we returned from the tour in the late evening, the place was unbelievable! Apparently, there was a bull fight that evening and the area was swarming with people.