Madrid 2023
Day 1: Royal Palace & Plaza Mayor
After attending an amazing wedding for Nick’s cousin on Block Island, Rhode Island, we headed to JFK airport to meet up with my cousin Tiffany and her boyfriend Mike for our flight to Madrid. Since we had about 90 minutes or so before boarding, we were able to use the American Airlines Greenwich Lounge in Terminal 8. It offered a nice place to relax, and the buffet was quite good, so we were all happy and well fed before heading off to our gate. After trying to get comfy as possible in our seats for our flight, we were quickly off on our way to Madrid.
I haven’t really checked flight schedules, but I think most transatlantic flights from JFK (and maybe the east coast as a whole) are overnight flights. I don’t know how anyone is able to get a decent amount of sleep on these flights, and then show up at 8am feeling refreshed and ready to tackle a full day of work or sightseeing.
Our flight actually arrived 30 minutes early, but we were all quite tired because none of us got a decent amount of sleep on the plane. But we were still very excited to be in Madrid, and the moment we stepped into the main terminal, we were greeted with a cool wooden ceiling the spans the entire length of the terminal:
Passport control took about 15 minutes, which is fast compared to other places we’ve been to. Soon afterwards, we were in a taxi to go to a cafe near our Airbnb. Since we were arriving so early in the day, we couldn’t check into our place until 11, so we needed to kill some time. And since we’d have our luggage with us, we didn’t really want to walk around the city, so we thought it would be easy to just sit in a cafe for a bit and grab some coffee and food to energize us a bit. Fortunately for us, a cute cafe called HanSo Cafe is just around the corner from our Airbnb, so we had the taxi drop us off there.
We got lucky when we arrived because there was one table for four that we could take. The person helping us at the counter was really nice and explained the menu to us in English. Along with the usual food and drinks that you would expect in any cafe, HanSo also has many Asian items, such as a black sesame latte, which I ordered, and an okonomiyaki waffle, that Tiffany ordered. There’s also a small menu of toasts that use Hokkaido milk bread, so I ordered their kimchi and pork toast:
My toast was much larger than I expected, but it was delicious. We also had some of the okonomiyaki waffle, and that was tasty too. We could easily see why HanSo is such a popular cafe (it was full the entire time we were there).
We still had some time to kill before our electronic key to open the door to our Airbnb would activate, so we went to a pharmacy to get some sunscreen, and then wandered a bit. Tiffany noticed a bookstore, so we walked inside to take a look. The main floor looked like your typical bookstore, but downstairs was fascinating. There were small arched alcoves with shelves of books, and couple of larger spaces with what appeared to be a small art exhibit:
We were pleasantly surprised and captivated by all of it. Nick and Tiffany both bought some items, and then it was time to head to our Airbnb to clean up a bit before heading to our first major attraction, the Royal Palace of Madrid.
It’s officially the residence of the royal family of Spain, but it’s really used for state functions. I don’t know where the royal family actually resides, but I think from time to time they appear at the Royal Palace.
The large plaza in the front is amazing in its size. The lampposts are decorated in a rich dark blue and gold motif. The palace itself is rather imposing as it towers over the plaza:
We headed inside the palace, where we were greeted with this statue:
The face though:
We then walked up the stairs to the main foyer, with a large painted fresco, rich red curtains and statues to greet visitors:
The first couple of rooms on the route would give us a taste of what to expect for the rest of the visit: ornately painted frescoes, lavish tapestries, and crazy chandeliers:
Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos for most of the rooms we visited, which is a shame because some of them were crazy. There was one small room called the porcelain room, and the walls and ceiling were covered in porcelain doll faces and flowers; it was actually a bit creepy. There was a large dining room with a table that seats like 100 people. I don’t know how you can talk to anyone on the other side of the table. There was also a small room that showcased the royal crown and scepter.
Nick was joking that usually when he looks up places to see how long people normally spend there, he cuts that time in half for us because we don’t actually spend that much time admiring the art. But here, he commented that the 2 hours that people normally spend here is more accurate because you’re forced to follow a route and usually stuck behind people who walk very, very slowly….
Eventually we made it through the rooms (to be honest, the last few rooms were unremarkable compared to the ornate first few rooms), and then headed off to get more coffee to keep us awake. Nick found a cute shop called Syra coffee nearby, so we headed there:
Nick got a mocha, and Tiffany and I both got iced lattes. We walked over to a nearby plaza to sit and enjoy our drinks. Getting off our feet for a while and sipping our cold drinks was very refreshing. I’m pretty sure if we had stayed too long on the bench, that we’d all fall asleep, so we started walking over to the Plaza Mayor.
The US doesn’t really have plazas, so it’s fascinating to just walk around a city and come across plazas of all sizes. Plaza Mayor is one of the largest ones in Madrid, and is surrounded by buildings on all sides, and on the ground floor are many restaurants, which we read were terrible so we avoided them. But standing in the center, we could admire the immense size of the space. There’s also a statue of Phillip III riding a horse in the center of the plaza, but it seemed a bit small for the size of the plaza itself:
In an effort to keep ourselves awake, we went to a nearby cafe that specializes in churros and chocolate, Chocolatería 1902 Churrería. I guess at 3:30pm, very few people are getting churros because the restaurant was quite empty, so we had no problems getting a table. We ordered their regular churros with a dark chocolate sauce and a milk chocolate with caramel sauce. Because there wasn’t a high demand for churros at this time, our churros were not warm, but still crispy, so that’s good. The dark chocolate sauce tasted like it was watered down melted dark chocolate, which was disappointing, but the milk chocolate caramel sauce was quite good, and dipping the churros in either sauce significantly improved the experience:
On the way back to the Airbnb, we stopped by another cute bookstore. Once again, it looked fairly standard in the front, but then we walked upstairs and things got interesting. First of all, the ceilings were very short, as evidenced by Nick trying to stand up:
And in the back part of the bookstore was a small sitting area with a cute black cat, where I proceeded to be very distracted. After a few minutes, we headed back out and back home so that we could take a short nap before waking up for dinner at a nearby tapas restaurant, Cabreira.
While we could have probably found better restaurants if we had the energy, the food was still good and being outside added a nice European flair to our first dinner in Madrid. I can’t remember all that we ordered, but some of the dishes included: shrimp in garlic sauce, tortilla de patata, asparagus with jamon, croquettes, and mushrooms stuffed with bacon:
And with that, we all needed to sleep after our very, very long day.
Day 2: Unplanned exploration while Jerry rested
Jerry came down with the flu, so after a light breakfast of coffee and pastries (and a visit to the pharmacy for cold medicine), he decided to stay in and rest while the rest of us explored parts of Madrid we hadn’t really planned on. The original plan for Tuesday was to make a day trip to Toledo to explore the historical sites, which would have been exhausting. Thankfully, nothing was pre-booked, so we scrapped that and Nick, Tiffany, and Mike headed out by themselves for the morning.
First up: Plaza de España, featuring a big statue of Don Quijote (with Sancho Panza!).
Plazas and parks in Europe are so much more pleasant than in the States. Nearby, we found a convent that looked like a castle, along with some other adorable local buildings:
There also was a nearby Spanish Walk of Fame that was laughably small, but at least had names we recognized, like Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas:
From there, we wandered over to a park that had an Egyptian temple, called Temple of Debod. There’s a long and disgusting history of Europeans taking (or “buying”) historical sites from countries with a long history, such as Greece and Egypt. The British Museum in particular has the bulk of the Parthenon, an endless assortment of Egyptian mummies, and lots more that they “acquired” throughout the years. Anyway, I don’t know the ethical backstory of how Madrid moved this authentic temple, but it’s nice that it’s free to visit.
It’s free to visit, but had an incredibly long line to go inside. From what I’d read, it’s not really worth the long wait, but it’s beautiful to photograph from the outside. Additionally, the park it’s in has great views across the river valley.
From there, we headed toward a (again, free!) contemporary art gallery, housed in a former military barracks. There was a hip vibe to the neighborhood as we got close (see neon store below), and we popped into an awesome coffee shop for a latte and a homemade limonada on the way.
The art featured here was fascinating. Some of it was weird (I mean, contemporary art can be like that), but it was really need to explore, and was a really interesting space they housed everything in.
We met up with Jerry for lunch, as he was starting to feel more human after taking decongestant and strong painkillers. Lunch in Spain is late, like 2pm onwards, and we had a huge and relaxing lunch that went until almost 4pm at a place called Desengaño 13. The name means something like “Disillusionment 13”, though the food was anything but disillusioning. And the portions were way bigger than we expected.
Finally, we explored Plaza del Sol, where there’s an iconic statue of a bear climbing a strawberry tree (madroño). The same image was on many of the manhole covers, as it’s been the sigil of Madrid since the 13th century.
While we were out, we also explored the shopping streets of Calle de Preciados and Calle del Carmen. We ended the evening by grabbing light fare from McDonald’s (I know I know, but we’d had a huge lunch and everyone was tired) and getting to bed at a reasonable hour.
Day 3: Museo Prado and Royal Botanical Gardens
For our last day in Madrid, we had purchased tickets to see the famous Museo Prado. One thing to note when visiting some of the attractions in Spain is that most of them still require pre-purchasing timed entry tickets. When we arrived to the Prado, there was a long line at the ticket office, so buying your tickets in advance really does cut down the wait time to get into the museum.
The entrance to the museum is cool, with the concrete roof with greenery above it:
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to take any photos inside the actual exhibitions. Nick was telling us that the museum houses what used to be the art collection of the royal family during the 1500s-1700s. That would explain why most of the art appeared to be from that era or earlier. There were many galleries of religious art, portraiture, and other renaissance art, all of which I am not particularly a fan of. The Prado also houses the a large collection of pieces by famed Spanish artist Francisco Goya, including one exhibit featuring his black paintings, which were dark both in appearance and in subject matter. It was by far one of the most interesting exhibits in the Prado for me.
The museum is quite large, with many small rooms situated next to long corridors of art, so it’s easy to get lost there even with a map. Nick was determined to visit every room, so we spent a few hours walking around, although I was getting quite bored of the art itself because, as I said before, the art featured in the museum is not my style. But if you love Spanish art, then this is definitely a must-see for you.
After having walked around for so long, we were hungry, so we stopped at Murillo for lunch. We all felt like we needed something healthy, after having spent our first day eating pretty poorly, so we all ended up getting some type of salad. I got the curried chicken salad with toasted banana bread, Mike ordered the burrata with tomatoes, Nick ordered the Niçoise, and I think Tiffany ordered the quinoa salad:
It was all very delicious, and made us feel a bit better about our eating habits. Soon, we were off to the nearby Royal Botanical Gardens.
I guess the recent heat waves in the region along with the time of year meant that very little was blooming in the garden. There was a small dahlia garden near the entrance, so we spent some time enjoying the last of the dahlias there:
Even though the flowers weren’t in bloom, the gardens were still beautiful to walk through, and provided bit of respite from the hustle and bustle of the city:
Further into the gardens was a strange looking tropical tree. We weren’t sure what it was from afar, but once we got closer, we discovered that it was some type of banana tree. We couldn’t find a sign explaining what type of banana tree it was, but it looked cool, especially with how the small bananas were growing at the base of a long branch, and at the end was a large bulb:
We continued around the gardens and found a fairly large exhibit of bonsai trees, which we were not expecting:
Many of these trees were 50+ years old, and they all looked amazing.
There were a couple of greenhouses that we went into, and immediately regretted because they were so hot and humid inside (as you would expect). However, we did get to see some cool ferns and tropical plants:
We were all getting a bit thirsty from being outside in the hot weather, so we wandered over to a nearby Starbucks for a refreshing drink and to cool down a bit before heading over for a very quick stop at our last attraction, Retiro Park. At this point, we had about 30 minutes or so before we needed to leave to go home and get ready for our dinner that night. This meant that really, all we could do was walk to the statue of Lucifer and then leave.
As we entered the gigantic park, we were greeted with wild parakeets flying around in the trees. We took a moment to attempt to take photos of them, while also staying cool under the shade of the trees:
Further up the main path is the previously mentioned statue of Lucifer, which is apparently the only known public statue to Lucifer. Given how very religious Spain is, we were surprised that such a statue exists, but were happy that it is still on display:
We then grabbed an Uber to go back to the Airbnb to rest a bit and freshen up before our highly anticipated dinner at the three Michelin starred and current #3 restaurant in the world, DiverXO!
Dinner: DiverXO
When we were planning this trip, we had read about the many Michelin starred restaurants in Spain, and one of the restaurants that caught our eye was DiverXO. Not only did the food look amazing for it’s creativity, but the general vibe from the chef to the decor seemed so different from the other high-end restaurants that we had been to, that we definitely needed to go there. So once reservations opened up, I immediately got us a table for our last night in Madrid, and it was worth it!
The first thing we noticed when we arrived was the lobby, and the crazy art surrounding us:
I’m not sure why their theme involves the flying pig, but it does lead to some fun artwork, and it also was a wonderful preview of what to expect at dinner. Further up, we were told that if we needed to find the bathrooms, that we should follow the path of butterflies. The bathrooms themselves were full of mirrors, butterflies, and books:
And then we were seated at our table, where the flying pig theme continued, as well as other quirky functional decor:
The servers here were all very friendly and fun. We were even told that if we needed a break in the food to use the bathroom or to digest, that they could accommodate those requests, which we did a couple of times.
Shortly afterwards, the show began with our first course, a raw crab dish that was a great starter:
I think there were 16 total courses served over a 4+ hour period, and we enjoyed each and every one, but a couple of highlights were the 3-second wok cooked peas and a beef consommé served in an ox horn:
Before each course was served, we were given a sheet of paper describing the upcoming dish, so at the end, we had 16 pieces of paper. We were also provided a small folder to keep those papers in to take home, which is a cute little souvenir to take home:
It was a dinner that none of us had experienced before, and we loved all of it, from the food to the design of the restaurant; definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far!