Madrid - Part 1

The night before I left for Madrid, we had a girls evening with a couple of friends, where one of my friends shared her story of how she met her husband. They met at the airport and ended up sitting next to each other in the airplane one afternoon eight years ago. I found this story to be incredibly romantic and decided to leave things to fate for my Madrid trip and didn't "preselect" my seat.

I was assigned a "center" seat - traditionally my least favorite seat, but I was so exhausted from being up the night before, and excited to see what fate had to offer that I didn't care. So I went to take my seat. To my left was a guy who was, well, let's just say not my type. So I eagerly awaited the arrival of the passenger to my right. And arrive he did. But before I looked at the face, I did what I always do, I checked the ring finger. And there was a ring. So that was the end of that. I closed my eyes and passed out on the entire flight to Madrid.

Now I don't know about you, but when a certain website, let's just call it liar.com, says that it's going to be 85 and sunny the entire time you are in Madrid, you tend to believe it. But if there's ever a time to learn from past mistakes, it's now. I had packed shorts and skirts, so imagine my shock and horror when I landed to find that it was 60F! And windy! So dash I did to Zara, cursing weather, oops, liar.com the entire way there, and bought an emergency jacket.

After the brother arrived from the Queen's land, we began our day of sightseeing. I had my three-ring binder with various permutations and combinations of all different things we could do, list of restaurants, bars, etc. My brother had a camera. And no desire to look at my binder. So, solely based on faith, off we went. We began the day at Plaza De Espana. It's a large square at the beginning of Gran Via, one of the busiest streets in Madrid. In the center is a monument to Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Here's what the Plaza looks like, on a cold, cloudy day:





We then passed Puerta Del Sol, one of the busiest squares right in the center of Madrid:



and took a long way to get to Plaza Mayor, mainly because men don't believe in things like admitting that we are lost or asking for directions. I finally took control and asked every other pedestrian on how to get to Plaza Mayor. We finally made it there:



The Plaza is one of the biggest squares in Madrid, with a varitey of restaurants, street musicians, painters, etc:



We had our first encounter with Tapas there and prayed for the weather to get warmer:



We then made our way to the Royal Palace and walked around the Palace grounds:



But then a combination of fatigue and laziness made us go back to the hotel for an hour nap, then ended up turning into a four hour sleep for me. But since I only had one lunch that day, I woke up starving. By then, it had also started to rain, so we just went to the closest bar for some paella and called it an early night. So what about the other three days? Were we equally lazy, or did we actually do all the touristy things that one ought to do in Madrid? Come back tomorrow to find out!