Hello everyone, thanks for coming back to my blog to read about our grand time in Europe. This is my last blog post documenting our time, but I do have a few follow up posts I may do about Europe in general. We also went two summer's before to Ireland and England, so I may do some blogs about those as well! I have also done some other traveling, so I may document that too! Thanks for being apart of the journey! This post is about our five long days in Madrid, I say long, because if any of you have been to Madrid, you will see that five days is so much time. Madrid is pretty small, and you could see it all in one day if you try!
We got to Madrid from Barcelona, I had not booked a way there, and I was a little stressed about it, but our hostel host had told us about a bus that could take us. It was a long bus ride, about 7 hours. Once we got to the bus station, we found the metro, and rode to a stop near our hotel. We stayed at a hotel with a kitchen and bathroom, but the A/C sucked, and no matter how many times we complained it never worked. We stayed in the center of Madrid, a close walking distant to everything, although I would say anywhere you stay in the center of Madrid is going to be close to everything. Madrid is small, but we found lots of things to do. We relaxed for a little in the hotel, and then got some dinner.
The next morning we headed off to see the sites. Our hotel wanted about 12 dollars a day for wifi, so we would go to the starbucks conviently near our hotel and use their free wifi. I would look up things for us to do and maps. Madrid is super easy to naviagate! We set out for the Plaza de Cibeles, which is a small plaza that is at the end of the famous Gran Via street. Here you see some great gothic buildings and a beautiful fountain. If I could nick-name Madrid, I would call it the city of fountains.
It was so so hot this day, we enjoyed the shade!
While we were sitting in the shade a group of bachelor partiers (I assume) were on one of those bike carts, it was so funny! We then started walking towards the Goya museum which I read really great reviews for, the lines were short when we got there, but it was too pricey for our budget, so we skipped. By the museum there is a small gothic church that seemed open to the public, lots of tourist were taking pictures and going inside, when Jeff and I peaked our heads in we quickly realized there was a wedding going on inside, oops! How embarassing, I guess those "tourists" were actually just guests.
We then walked through some small clobble-stoned streets towards Plaza Mayor.
Plaza Mayor is very famous, it is a 1700 inspired plaza with restaurants and a huge statute in the center. I read a blog that mentioned a funny story about the statue. They said that the horse once had an open mouth and that it was the perfect size for small birds to fit in, but they couldn't get out, and they would die inside (sad, I know), and that the statue would just reak, and they didn't know why it smelled so bad, until they discovered bones when they were repairing it. The mouth has since been sealed, thank goodness, we didn't have to smell the stinky horse!
After walking around Plaza Mayor we walked towards the Madrid Palace, which I heard is one of the largest active palaces in Europe. You would think that Palace of Versailles would be larger, and if you consider the gardens it would be larger, but if just considering the buildings themselves, the Madrid palace would be much larger. While walking towards the palace we stumbled upon a view beautiful buildings and churches!
This church is right before the palace!
Here is a side view of the palace, you can see how it goes on forever!
Across from this view there is a fountain. Honestly, this entire section with the spanish apartments and fountains and everything was so beautiful, one of those pictures you could never quite capture with a camera! When I look back on Madrid, I fall in love with the city all over again, I don't think I clearly saw it until I started this blog. I was so exhausted, burnt-out and just wanted to be back in America when we were in Madrid, I didn't realize how amazing it was!
After you pass this beautiful site, you can enter the palace gardens, which are directly behind the palace. It is so beautiful!
We did so much on our first day exploring Madrid! But, I was able to find so much more things for us to do! So hang tight, and I'll be posting about the 3rd & 4th days in Madrid, and our LAST day we spent in Europe! Thanks again for reading! If you have any questions feel free to send me a DM!
-Mariah