Our French trip in Nessa is already nearly two months ago! We are slacking badly on the holiday front. Promising ourselves a week off every month was going well. However it turns out that funding this lifestyle involves periods of working! Who knew?
So we are off to Madrid for a weekend break. A sort of mutual pre-birthday present to ourselves.
Madrid has been on my bucket list for a long while. I've heard nothing but wonderful tales of late night tapas, flamenco, jazz and sophisticated city life. Hopefully a lot to live up to. A lot to pack in, and we did. But having been there now I would equally recommend just sitting in a square, with a coffee, and people watching.
Most importantly, we were so ready for this trip.
Alarm set for 3.30am, Heathrow by 4.30am and the first BA flight out at 6.05am. Effortless. On the stand BA announce the wrong type of fog in Madrid! When you have just two nights in a new city every minute is precious.
Thankfully the fog lifted and we were in the air an hour late. Some happy quirk of climate change conspired with the god of mini breaks to deliver us to Madrid just eight minutes behind schedule.
Must recommend the amazing app "Rome to Rio" as an essential tool of the seasoned mini breaker. Our journey from Aeropuerto to downtown was mapped for us, weekend metro 10 journey ticket was 14€.
Smooth Metro ride to within a few hundred yards of our hotel. The Pavilions Madrid is slightly off central, a mile walk, but convenient and has ristretto coffee on tap in the room. Job done.
I'm usually not too bothered about accomodation on a city break. We chose this cos it was featured in a Telegraph article on best Madrid hotels, was near the centre and price wise it's a step up from a hostel ! It's excellent and certainly not basic. Extremely happy. Room was even ready for check in at 11am.
Straight off to the excellent Tapas and Wine tasting tour we had arranged. Paola was waiting to show us the best and oldest Tapas places around central Madrid. (TripAdvisor recommended Madrid Tapas and wine tasting tour. Booked in advance)
We dutifully followed her around four venues we would have certainly missed without our guide.
We were served tripe and bean stew, Padron peppers, various iberico ham concoctions, pork bites, breaded sword fish, extraordinary prawns in garlic with chilli, and a traditional peasant dessert, which was pretty good despite being made from fried stale bread soaked in milk and wine. Yes. Pretty good.
Gambas al aijo were nothing short of spectacular . This was in a small bar that served only this! Incredible.
Lots of foods we would never have tried, some we loved but most importantly accompanied by interesting information intended to orientate us in Madrid. Perhaps had it not been for the accompanying wines the orientation might have worked!
Tostados de Sobrassada is a mallorcan dried pork sausage, think soft chorizo paste on tomato bread - grilled would be my guess! Very good. (Weirdly, served along with a soft mild cheddary cheese on white roll, rarebit style with quince jelly ? Which was interesting, no frankly odd to be honest.). The white wine here was amazing !
Oh boy, dry but fruity peach and tropical notes like lychee. Went really well with the salty soft Sobrissada.
Overall a five star experience.
Afternoon snooze at the hotel before heading back to centre.
Few drinks and then Cafe Central for a night of cool jazz. We loved this, including more tapas and cocktails.
We wandered the vibrant Madrileon streets taking in the vibe before heading, heavy legged, back to the hotel.
Day two we had booked tickets to Museo Nacional Del Prado, Spains major art gallery.
But first, breakfast. We had read about a place behind the Prado, but don't sweat too much about choice in Madrid, there are excellent places everywhere! And if you head for somewhere busy you won't go wrong in our experience. The place we aimed for didn't have seats outside so we headed around the corner to a cafe called Plenti. Breakfast under blue skies. One of the best breakfasts. I'll just tell you about Louise's toastie. Goats cheese, home made apricot jam and walnuts. Amazing.
The Prado is an incredible space, over 100 rooms on 3 floors showcasing the best of European art. Goya, Valazquez, Rubén's, Titian, El Greco and many more. Really you would need a couple of days to scratch the surface. We were helped by some amazing pointers from the Devour Tours site .
We headed for the highlights over a couple of hours and left having seen a great selection of Art. Better educated but profoundly depressed by the subject matter of the vast majority of classical art! Well worthy of a visit, even on our very tight time scale.
Next, lunch. Madrid has some great food halls. Back in central Madrid (15 minute walk) we found Mercado de San Miguel.
Possibly the oldest and certainly very popular. The selection of outlets was amazing.
We had an Octopus brochette, Padrone peppers, moving on to a raw tuna only outlet for incredible smokey tartar. And a glass of Albariño.
Finishing off with a fried seafood medley. Oh and beer.....
After lunch we headed for the nearby Gran Via, the Oxford Street of Madrid. For shopping, and being repeatedly stuck behind very slow people on the pavement. I did my usual slightly tipsey annual shopping spree, in Uniqlo, buying everything I saw in 15 minutes, then wondering how to get it all home with a 10kg flight bag. Lucky I hardly brought anything with me!
A "cram it all in day" wouldnt be complete with some flamenco, as our food tour guide said, "of course, yes, it's only for you tourists, but it's very good". Further south in Spain of course there are more authentic experiences to be had, but here it's staged and widely available. We enjoyed it enormously. The Centro Cultural Flamenco seated about 50 and the show had everything I expected, brooding looks, moorish wailing, lots of stamping, blisteringly fast guitar plucking, and gloriously sweaty trousers. It lasted 59 minutes and 48 seconds, we didn't get a refund for the 12 second early finish. I believe perhaps the main male dancer had to rush because his trousers had somewhat over tightened causing a blood supply issue?
By Saturday night we were exhausted. First rule of the mini break, know when you are beaten! Plans for late night cocktails, clubbing and shinanigans were shelved in place of an amazing steak, a bottle of Rioja and a taxi back to the hotel. Wonderful day! As I said already, we found heading for anywhere that serves what you fancy (that isn't empty) works well in such a fiercely competitive city. No need to spend hours trawling reviews or checking tripadvisor.
Sunday, our flight home is booked for 2.30pm.
That gives us just enough time to take in brunch in a sun filled square, and then on to the Latin quarter for Madrid and europes largest flea market.
Miles of stalls selling absolutely nothing you need. And thousands of people walking too slowly.
But a visual feast to round off a weekend that managed to tick so many of our mini break boxes and deliver us home mid Sunday afternoon in time for a roast dinner.
Olé!
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