Madrid, Spain

Our last stop on our Spanish excursion was Madrid. Friday morning we took a train from Seville to Madrid via Rail Europe. We arrived in Madrid just after noon and to be honest, by the time we arrived in Madrid, we were exhausted; but, we persevered and continued on our journey.

One great thing about Madrid is their metro system. We were able to catch the metro at the train station and it took us pretty close to our hotel. We stayed at Hotel Quo Eraso which was pretty nice. It was close to several metro stops so it was easy to get where we wanted to go quickly.

After checking in to the hotel we ventured down to Puerto del Sol which is the most central point of Madrid. This is where the Bear and the Strawberry Tree statue is (also known as the "symbol of Madrid").

We then made a stop in a cafe called San Gines which is known to have the best Churros con Chocolate in town. This place was actually recommended to us by a native of Spain. One of my boss's friends grew up in Madrid and provided several "local" recommendations which was awesome. I'd have to say, San Gines did live up to its reputation; the Churros con Chocolate was pretty amazing.

We then took a walk around Plaza Mayor which is a well known spot in Madrid with a lot to see. There were a lot of great artists at work there which was cool.

On Saturday we did a hop-on, hop-off bus so we could fit as much in as possible. Unfortunately this one wasn't near as good as the bus in Barcelona. The sound on the headphones didn't work half the time and it was a rainy day, so we couldn't take all of the pictures of the various sites that we wanted to.

We made a stop at the Museo del Prado and took a walk through Parque del Retiro which were both nice.

Another great recommendation from my boss's friend was La Mallorquina, a pastry shop in Puerto del Sol that has been there for more than 100 years. We had a great snack and certainly recommend it to future visitors.

El Museo del Jamon was also recommended to us. It's a chain restaurant so there are plenty of options. We stopped in one and had every intention of eating there but when we looked at the menu and saw pretty much the same pictures we've seen since we arrived in Barcelona, we decided we just couldn't eat another jamon y queso sandwich, so we went elsewhere. We actually ended up finding a McDonald's because at that point we needed a taste of American food. Our time in Madrid was short but just long enough. We took the metro to the airport on Sunday to catch our flight back to Jacksonville, Florida. We decided for the next trip we're going to fly back on Saturday so we have an extra day to recover before returning to work.

When we arrived at the airport we noticed there were quite a few cancelled flights. Thankfully, ours was right on time and we had no trouble at all. We were completely oblivious to the volcano eruption in Iceland that had grounded many flights. When we travel internationally we like to disconnect completely and leave our phones behind. We didn't find out there about the eruption until we were on our layover in Philadelphia and Brian talked to his dad. We were extremely lucky because there were people across Europe stranded for weeks! Overall we had a fantastic time in Spain celebrating our third wedding anniversary. It was pretty busy though, so I think we're already planning a beach location for our fourth wedding anniversary trip!

You can check out the rest of our Madrid photos here.