Return to Five Cities in Spain
Five Spanish cities revisited, with focus on cuisine and culture in the North of Spain. Barcelona, Zaragoza, Logroño, San Sebastián, and Madrid will always be new in our eyes.
Madrid
What to See and Do in Madrid
What you should be sure to see, do, and eat in Madrid. Museums, restaurants, shopping, and more. And where you should stay while you’re considering whether to move there.
Six Reasons Madrid’s Prado is the Best Museum in Europe
The Prado Museum in Madrid Spain is arguably the best in Europe, based on its art collection of masterpieces. The art was mostly gathered by three Spanish kings (16-17th Century), but has been curated and improved upon ever since. Here are six important works from the Prado.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Spain
This is a list of all the Unesco World Heritage sites in Spain, with links to posts about the ones we have visited and photographed.
The Best Introduction to Madrid is the Madrid Food Tour
It seems like we’ve been to Madrid five hundred times. We’ve probably spent that many days there and eaten meals and tapas in at least half that many Madrid restaurants and bars. And at least half of those were very good. So, when it comes to a Madrid food tour, we feel like we’ve already done it.
Stay and Eat in Barcelona, Girona, and Madrid
This trip to Spain was unusual for us. It was fast, it was pre-planned, and it was with four others, Tom’s two brothers and their wives. Tom and I were … Read more
Spain: 3 Unesco World Heritage Day Trips from Madrid
Three Unesco World Heritage sites, Segovia, El Escorial, and Alcalá de Henares are all easy day trips from Madrid.
A Little Treasure of Madrid, the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales
When Kris and I lived in Madrid thirty-two years ago we worked at a language school that was about eight blocks from our apartment. One of the routes we often took to work took us past a nondescript building with two large oak doors and a small sign beside one of them which identified it as a convent. (Here’s the Google map.)
The same sign offered tours during limited hours, but in all the time we lived here, and in our many subsequent visits to Madrid, we never got around to seeing what was inside the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales. We remedied that this time.
On Journalism and Bullfights in Madrid
Madrileños, unlike most denizens of big cities, are genuinely friendly and eager to talk about their city, Spain, and almost anything else you want to discuss. Our first night here, we had a discussion about journalism and its position as a profession in Spanish society over beers and a plate of olives at an outdoor cafe in the Plaza Mayor with a young man named José Angel. José Angel’s girlfriend is a journalist and he’s a carpenter, so he allowed as there was some friction with her parents over his “station” in life. I assured him that their positions would probably be reversed if he came to the United States and he’d be welcome to visit us anytime the in-laws got to be too much.