Barb and Baden’s Excellent Spanish Adventure – Part 4

So What’s Wrong with Spain, Anyway?

Over dinner the other night, Barb and I were talking about our choice to travel to Spain and that relatively few other people that we know had express interest in going to Spain as well. As far as Europe goes, certainly Italy and France are always talked about as places people state that they are dreaming of travelling to and Germany is also similarly stated but only usually if there is family there. But rarely Spain. So we began talking about why this was the case and trying to figure this out. In the end, we really didn’t have any real good answer other than that many people that we know travel to Mexico and perhaps Spain was considered “the same” as Mexico. I guess this is like saying that Canada and England both have some things in common so if you’ve seen Canada then don’t bother going to England. It doesn’t really make sense but we similarly didn’t have Spain high up on our list as it too five trips to Europe before making it here. All we can say is that we have certainly been enjoying ourselves here with our trip not even half over.

So cancel those plans to Italy and France and book a trip to Spain. 😉

Day 7:

We arrived at the Madrid airport to an absolute downpour. It seems that when you arrive on a plane in Spain, you have to get on a bus and then get driven to the terminal. The 25 meters that we walked from the plane to the bus got us soaking wet. We took the subway to our hotel and were quite surprised that when we walked up the stairs from the subway station, it was bright and sunny. A very good sign.

We were pretty exhausted after dragging our luggage through the Madrid subway system from the airport so we did some quick exploring and just went out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. The place we went to eat was off the beaten track and we assume that very few tourists eat there because we arrived at 9:30 and we were the only ones in the restaurant until 10:00. We drank a bottle of great Spanish red wine with our meal and as usual, walked for about 30 minutes before getting back to our hotel around 11:30.

It’s interesting that we have found eating so late very easy to do as we normally are eating around 6:00 at home and would be crazy if we were eating at 10:00. However, when in Rome (or Madrid), then say, do as the Romans.

I have had a few people ask me about how safe we feel walking the streets in big cities in Europe. The true fact is that living in Vancouver is a very poor training ground for travelling *anywhere* as we never really have to deal with much in the way of street crime. However, the reality of the situation is that you must exercise a certain amount of sensible caution in most areas over here as pick pocketing is really the main concern. I’m not talking about being absolutely paranoid but just being cautious about what you put in your pockets and what keeping a good eye on your backpack. We never feel unsafe anywhere we have travelled to but you just have to remember that you have to keep your eyes open.

Day 8:

Today was the first day that I would describe as “cold” as the temperature was about 17 or 18 bright and early in the morning (about 10:30). The weather in Madrid is quite different than Barcelona not so much of the temperature but the there is virtually no humidity in Madrid so you are not sweating the same way we did in Barcelona.

Today we really started to explore the city for the first time and I quickly saw how truly grand Madrid was – truly one of the great cities of Europe. I know that I’ve used that expression before but Barcelona, while a very beautiful city, just was not on the same scale as Madrid. While exploring downtown Madrid, you can just see that architecture and design of the city that gives you this feeling that this is an important city. We walked down one of the major streets: the Gran Via (10 lanes wide at its widest) past many of the larger buildings like the Banco d’España.

We did some more shopping in that area of town and later went out for dinner at a local restaurant. When we got back to the hotel, our tickets for the Réal Madrid football match had arrived and we are now set for this Sunday. I had ordered the tickets on the Internet before leaving Vancouver and had supplied our hotel name for them to be delivered when we arrived.

Before we left for Spain, we were considering attending a bullfight while we are in Madrid. However, since the bullfights are only on Sundays, we had to abandon those plans when we decided to get football tickets. We were actually watching the bullfights on the TV this afternoon in the hotel room so we had a chance to understand what we were missing. To be honest, it’s probably just as well that we’re not going.

We also did a visit to the huge Prada Museum which is probably the largest museum in all of Spain. The main showcase in this museum were paintings from the Spanish artist Velésquez but many other famous names like Raphael and Goya. There were specific sections for Spanish, Italian, Dutch and German artists. It’s interesting that most of the art fell into about 2 main categories: religious and rich families. I guess in the 1600’s – early 1700’s (where much of the art is focused), an artist was sponsored either by the church or wealthy families. It’s interesting that many of the paintings had scenes depicting nude people but there was always a convenient tree branch or cloth handy to cover up the ‘unmentionables’.

Day 9:

After getting to bed at past midnight the night before (as usual), we had to getup at around 6AM to make an early train to Segovia which is about 2 hours north of Madrid.

After departing the stating in Madrid, it reminded me how much I really love travelling by train in Europe. Travelling by train is so convenient as you can show up at the station about 10 minutes before the departure and just jump on board. There’s no line-ups for security and endless waiting at the boarding gates and then waiting for your luggage when you finally get there. Going by train allows you to see the country side and you sit in relative spacious and luxurious seats compared to a plane.

We did a lot of train travel in Britain and Germany but much less so in France last year. The main reason was that a train from Nice to Paris was about €250 and was going to take about 5 hours. We were able to get a flight with EasyJet for €50 for the both of us for a 1 hour flight. I suspect that these discount airlines will continue to steal passengers who would normally travel by train.

The main attraction in Segovia is a 2000 year old Roman aqueduct. The aqueduct here is spans between two hills and is over 2500 ft long and about 100 ft high. Apparently it is still functional as the backup system for supplying water to Segovia and the surrounding area. This is pretty good considering that it was built a couple of thousand years ago.

One the way back from Segovia, we were the only ones in the compartment on that train and as usual, the conductor came to check our tickets. About 15 minutes after checking them, he came back and started asking us something in Spanish and was pointing to a handful of Euro coins. We thought that he was asking us to pay more as he kept saying ‘pay’. After getting out the dictionary, we finally were able to understand that he was asking us what country we came from (‘país’ is Spanish for ‘country’) and that he collected coins from other countries. We had to disappoint him by stating that we had left our Canadian money at the hotel room. He seemed like a nice enough guy and it was unfortunate that our Spanish was not god enough to have a conversation.

Day 10:

This morning we had a breakfast that we had heard about and had wanted to try since we got to Spain: ‘chocolate con churros’. This is basically a very, very think chocolate drink (almost pudding) and the churros which are these fried doughnut-like things that you dip in the chocolate drink and eat. We washed all of this down with our usual coffee con lèche and it was a meal fit for a king. It’s a good thing that we’re walking so many kilometres each day otherwise these rich breakfasts and dinners would definitely be adding to our waistline.

This evening we will be heading out to Bernabeu stadium for our anxiously awaited Real Madrid football match. We will likely be there with about 75,000 other people and we expect it to be quite an exciting evening.

Tomorrow we head out on our second day trip going to Toledo. On Tuesday, we will be leaving Madrid and going to our next destination: Seville. I will be sad to say goodbye to Madrid as I have very much enjoyed myself. I know that Barb is not such a big fan of the bigger cities but this is really my passion when we come to Europe.

Until next time,

Barb and Baden

Continue on to Barb & Baden’s Excellent Spanish Adventure – Part 5