Two Weeks of Rest and Recovery in Madrid

I’m a few days behind in posting about our time in Madrid, but I wanted to make sure to write about it since we ended up doing so much in only a few days. We were in Madrid for two weeks staying at Cristóbal’s dad’s house. We wanted to have a couple weeks to rest before coming to London. Unfortunately, I ended up catching a pretty bad cold that kept me in bed for about 5 days of it. Because of that we really only had time to go downtown and enjoy Madrid one day. The rest of the time we were hanging around at home, visiting family, going to dinner with friends and buying a couple of last-minute items for our trip (such as a lighter coat that I’ll be able to wear from now until it gets REALLY cold).

The day that we spent downtown, we definitely fit a lot in. We started in the morning by taking the metro to Sol and walked from there to Plaza Mayor for a bocadillo de calamares at Cristóbal’s favorite spot, La Ideal. After that we stopped at Mercado San Miguel, which despite being a bit overpriced and crowded is one of my favorite spots in Madrid. It’s an indoor market right in the city center that has food stands specializing in and selling different small dishes, such as varieties of olives, cheese platters, croquetas, oysters, etc. You can buy food from different stands and stand at a table in the middle of the market snacking on all of the delicious snacks (with a glass of wine, obviously).

Afterwards, we went to the Almudena, which is the cathedral of Madrid. The cathedral itself is really nice, however we decided to go see the crypt-chapel down below because I had never been. It was impressive! I had no idea how huge it was. Interestingly, in Spain right now they’re trying to relocate the remains of the former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco due to the controversy that has always surrounded him being buried at a huge monument that he had built in his honor by the prisoners of the Spanish Civil War. Cristóbal was telling me that Franco’s family is discussing moving his remains to the crypt of the Almudena. I’m not sure how that will resolve the controversy since it will still be possible to visit the remains, but the crypt of the Almudena will certainly become a lot more crowded if they do end up relocating him there.

After the Almudena we visited another place I had never been, Sabatini Gardens. The gardens are part of the Royal Palace, but are open to the public. We walked around, took pictures and rested for a bit while enjoying the views from the top of the stairs.

Cristóbal had to go meet a friend for a drink, so I took advantage of being by myself and did some shopping on Gran Vía. Really, I just went to Primark, bit since Primark is massive it seemed like I fit an entire day’s worth of shopping into an hour and a half. Most importantly I was able to find a couple more sweaters as well as a blanket scarf that I’ll be able to use both as a scarf when we’re out and about and as a blanket when we’re sleeping on the trains.

Later in the evening I met back up with Cristóbal and we met a friend of mine, Jessica, for tacos and margaritas at Taqueria Mi Ciudad. Jessica is one of my American friends that I met in Madrid about 7 or 8 years ago when we were still living there. Jessica at the time was doing the same job I was, working as an English language assistant, but at a different school. We met the day of the language assistant orientation. She’s the only one from that group that is still living in Madrid all these years later, and it’s always great being able to see her when we’re in town!

Despite our two weeks feeling extra short, it was nice being able to visit with everyone and enjoy our time there. At least we always know that we’ll be back in Madrid soon enough to see everyone again.