Madrid, Spain
What are the best things to see when you only have half a day in Madrid?
This was the question I posed to Google countless times before our trip, knowing that we would only have an evening and a morning to explore the capital city of Spain. Not enough time, I know! We would have planned for more time in this outstanding city, but in the words of my 3rd grade teacher, there were “things to do, people to see, places to go, fish to fry!” (She also used to say “cats to skin,” but as a cat-lover, that phrase never became part of my vocabulary).
Madrid is everything I could ever want in a European capital city: totally vibrant, bright, friendly, big, fast, overwhelming, and authentic.
From the research I’ve done on Madrid, however, it seems that people like to hate on it for all that it doesn’t have—as Lonely Planet describes the city, “there is no equivalent of the Eiffel Tower, Colosseum or La Sagrada Familia that you can point to and say ‘this is Madrid’.”
That may be true, but Madrid is classic España, as I’ll soon prove to you.
So how much did we see in half a day? A ton.
On our first evening in Madrid, we were understandably jet-lagged and missing a few pieces of luggage, so Matt dragged me to a place I never thought I’d see on vacation—an outlet shopping mall. (This actually gave us an excuse to use the Madrid subway system, which is always an interesting experience in any city). We spent about half an hour inside El Corte Inglés to replace the contents of luggage we had lost while flying, and while the experience was pleasant enough, I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d ended up at the Spanish equivalent to Macy’s on my European holiday.
With new socks on our feet and shopping bags in hand, we wandered down Calle de la Princesa to visit two far more impressive sites: El Palacio Real and Los Jardines de Sabatini.
The Royal Palace of Spain is the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family, and although I don’t follow the family closely or pretend to any encyclopedic knowledge of them, Princesa Leonor and Infanta Sophia are adorable children. The Internet also informs me that the Royal Family does not live in this palace; rather, they make their home on the outskirts of Madrid, at the Palacio de Zarzuela.
The Palace was built on the site of a former alcazar in between the years 1760 and 1764, and it boasts the achievement of being the largest European royal palace, with a whopping 3,418 rooms. Inside the walls lie famous paintings from artists such as Caravaggio, Velazquez, and Goya, while jewels such as Campo del Moro, Jardines de Sabatini, Plaza de Armas, and Plaza de Oriente crown the exterior of the palace.
The Sabatini Gardens, which were imagined in the 1930s but not completed until 1978, were our first encounter with the Royal Palace. The Gardens are situated at the north side of the palace, and impressed us with their geometrical symmetry and maze-like hedges. We wandered through the gardens for about half an hour, stopping to sit on a bench in front of the reflecting pool, which is flanked by beautiful white statues of former kings of Spain. On a hot summer day in Madrid, this park offered the perfect respite for our tired feet and sunburned faces.
After our trip through the Gardens, we walked around the perimeter of the palace, admiring the view from Plaza de la Armería, from which we could see the opposite side of the palace and the Almudena Cathedral across the road.
It was hard for us to place the palace, with its glittering gold facade, rising Ionic columns, open, spacious plazas, white marble statues, and hedge-lined gardens. As we gazed upon it, trying to compare it to something in our collective experience, we threw around names like Versailles, the Luxembourg Gardens, Buckingham Palace. None seemed to stick: El Palacio Real, in all its grandiosity, color, design, and artwork, is so obviously a celebration of Spain.
After one last glance at this stunning building, we continued our journey east towards El Mercado de San Miguel, which is a covered marketplace situated near the center of the city, near the Plaza Mayor. Inside the market, vendors sold gourmet tapas, olives, gelato, sangria, fresh bread, and dulces.
We admired each stall with hungry eyes before settling into two chairs on the outdoor plaza, where we enjoyed a dinner of croquettes, sangria, salmon, and risotto.
The waiter was so happy with our eagerness to speak in Spanish that after we had paid, he brought us a few shots of Bailey.
Surprised but honored by this treat, we clinked glasses with him, toasted to Spain, and threw back the sweet after-dinner liqueur.
After that, we knew we loved Madrid. Our limbs tingled with sangria and Bailey’s and our brains were abuzz with Spanish. Fortified, we skipped through the rest of the streets, eyes scanning the windows of each store for the perfect nighttime treat.
Without even trying, we landed upon the Plaza Mayor in minutes. The Plaza Mayor is the central plaza in Madrid, surrounded by tall residential buildings with balconies facing the Plaza. It was 9pm on a Friday night, and people were just sitting down for their dinners while vendors sold fake Prada and Luis Vuitton bags, artists painted famous Spanish landmarks, and laughter trickled in from the outdoor cafes.
From the Plaza, our dessert was just within reach: the famous, if not overtly touristy, Chocolatería de San Ginés. The Chocolatería is perhaps most famous for its chocolate con churros (hot chocolate and churros), served Spanish-style with hot, dark, and thick chocolate and deep-fried crispy long donuts for dunking. We dunked our six churros until they were drowning in chocolate and laughed at the mess we made in our sangria-and-Bailey’s-filled giddiness.
By this time (11pm), the sun had finally set, but the city was just coming to life. As we walked back to our hotel down La Gran Vía, we spotted bright, colorful billboards from above (giving us heavy Times Square vibes) and narrowly avoided getting doused with champagne as someone popped a bottle during dinner. We passed through Plaza de España with its monument to Miguel de Cervantes and returned to our beds, exhausted.
The next morning, we woke early enough to enjoy breakfast at the hotel (where I spent almost half an hour trying to boil an egg), and then headed out for a final tour of the city. We tramped back down La Gran Vía, which was much quieter in the early morning hours, until we reached La Puerta del Sol.
La Puerta del Sol is Madrid’s most famous and most central public square, which is flanked by busy city streets and the ornate Casa de Correo, which houses the headquarters of the Madrid regional government.
We quickly spotted the famous Oso y Madroño statue, which is the official coat of arms of Madrid: a bear trying to reach the berries in a strawberry tree. I’ve heard several different explanations for this unique symbol, but I’ll leave you with my favorite: bears used to populate the forests surrounding Madrid, and used to eat the berries from trees that produced fruit that appeared to be strawberries. Sometimes the bears looked a little tipsy after eating the fruit!
As we continued to wander, we noticed a stone slab on the pavement in front of the Casa de Correos marks Spain’s Kilometre 0, and learned that it is allegedly the starting point for all major radial roads in Spain, as well as the center of the country.
We also had the pleasure of seeing a city-wide urban-art installation that has taken over Madrid. You are likely familiar with Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas (“ladies in waiting”), which hangs in Madrid’s Prado Museum. The painting depicts princess Margarita Teresa surrounded by members of her court, including her ladies in waiting and Velázquez himself (famously) in the background.
Sculptor Antonio Azzato has brought to life over eighty of these life-size meninasand delivered them to various artists, asking them to paint them in answer to the question “What is Madrid for you?”
We spotted a multitude of the meninas in our journey through the city—I hope you have enjoyed the photos we took of these wonderful ladies!
