Madrid, Spain

After bouncing around different places in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras every 3-7 days for six weeks, we were ready to settle into some routine for a little while. While planning the trip, we knew we'd be ready to get to Granada, where we planned to spend our first month in Europe, so we only planned three nights and two full days in Madrid. Even though people were sick, and we were struggling to adjust from the time change/ jetlag, we packed a lot in, but two days was not nearly enough. We hadn't been to Madrid before and had heard varying things about it from others, but we absolutely loved it and would definitely go back. 

Nicole worked as a Paraprofessional this past fall at Creighton Middle School in Lakewood, where she met and befriended the art teacher, Zephyr. Among other things, Zephyr helps coordinate international trips for students in the school and the district, and, as a result, gets sent on a trip of their own each year. Our first night in Madrid happened to overlap with Zephyr's trip to Madrid this year, so we met them out for dinner. We were all a little loopy and bleary-eyed from our 17+ hours of travel and time change, but it was really fun to meet them and make the connection in this far-off land. We returned to our funky flat, and did our best to go to sleep for the night.

We had a great, though quirky, apartment (Nicole and I literally had to crawl into our bed because of the sloped ceilings) just a few minutes' walk from Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol. From this central location, we found Madrid to be incredibly walkable and fun to explore. We took two walking tours in our two days, and meandered about the city on our own quite a bit as well, and we barely scratched the surface. 

After a quick breakfast of crepes on our first morning, we met our tour guide for our first of two walking tours in Puerta del Sol. Idan was engaging, hilarious, and had many great stories to tell. In the pictures, you'll see Restaurante Botin, the oldest continuously run restaurant in the world, which opened in 1725! Apparently, this was a favorite hangout of Ernest Hemingway; he befriended the owners and would often come in early to write at a table upstairs, then come down for lunch (and booze). At Restaurante Botin we were shown a small brass plaque on the sidewalk, designating it as a historic site- we hadn't noticed them before, but these are all over the city in front of places that you otherwise wouldn't know were historic sites. There was a pharmacy, for instance, which was actually a museum of Royal healthcare and pharmaceutical items "of the Queen Mother" that was from 1578. Apparently, there is a tunnel under the pharmacy that goes all the way to the royal palace, and the queen used to use the tunnel to come and go from the palace with less attention. On another part of the tour, we met the "Curious Neighbor," a bronze statue built to call attention to some ancient Roman Ruins that you could otherwise easily walk past in this narrow passageway between buildings. The statue has become more of an attraction than the ruins, and legend has it that rubbing one butt-cheek will bring health, and rubbing the other will bring wealth. Our tour guide was kind enough to ask the bronze gentleman for consent before we polished his backside. To finish the night, I took the kids for churros and chocolate, a Spanish tradition. Yum!

On the second day in Madrid, we went to a Banksy museum and had plans to go to one of the larger art museums, but colds and upside-down sleep schedules convinced us that we'd just have to come back another time. The Banksy museum was super cool. If you know anythign about Banksy, then you know that these were all obviously replicas of his work from around the globe, but it was a really cool tour through his work and advocacy for freedom over the decades. Very moving. Unfortunately, Miles was totally laid up in bed and missed this one. We did do another walking tour in the afternoon/ early evening and saw some amazing architecture and learned more about Spanish history, which we learned has been full of incredible instability until relatively recently. We ended the day by trying a squid sandwich ("bocadillo de calamares") which is basically just fried squid rings in a baguette, and they are advertised ALL OVER Madrid. Apparently the official unofficial sandwich of the city came into existence in the mid 20th century because of how fast and easy it to make and its portability, but it really shined during Lent and other Catholic holidays when devotees were restricted from eating meat (seafood is a convenient loophole). I can't say it was my favorite Spanish treat, but it wasn't wholly terrible.

The next morning, I walked across town, picked up our rental car, and we drove the easy four hours to Granada. The Spanish countryside between Madrid and Granada is incredibly reminiscent of Colorado- maybe more like the Western Slope, of Colorado, but Colorado nonetheless. There were mountains not far off in the distance as we drove through high desert climates where, instead of cattle and sagebrush, there were seemingly endless olive tree farms. As it had been a while since she'd driven a manual transmission, Nicole wanted to drive for a spell, which was great until we arrived in the neighborhood of our apartment. Our Granada home is in the center or "centro" district of town (walkability was paramount when we made reservations), which is comprised of very, sometimes excessively, narrow cobblestone roads and alleyways. I call it "Canyon City," because the buildings all rise up next to each other and these narrow passageways remind me of being in Utah's canyon country. Neverless, we made it safely to our apartment, unloaded our luggage, parked the car, and fell quickly asleep.