Spain
- seanick9
- Jul 5, 2025
- 26 min read
We spent much of June 2025 in Spain, visiting a few different cities, experiencing Tapas, Paella, Sangria, Bocadillos, the train system, some castles, amazing museums, and more. The one regret I think we have here is that we didn’t come sooner (both in general, and this year) - it was amazing but we were also in the middle of an unexpected heat wave that had us dealing with nearly 100 degree temps for most of the trip.
It started out on arrival in Barcelona from the Sun Princess cruise - however, both Anna and I had spent some time in Barcelona and didn’t think it was necessarily going to be the best place for Emily so we chose to skip right ahead to Valencia by train.
Valencia
Our first day in Valencia, we could tell that we had made a good choice coming here. This city was beautiful, and we were staying right near the old Turia river bed which had been drained and turned into Turia Garden. We enjoyed the shopping, both clothing stores and the open food markets, the food and drink including those in the great neighborhood we stayed in (La Gran Via) with lots of Asian and italian restaurants in addition to the Paella and Tapas options, and we even visited the local beach.
Jardin de Turia
Something of a sad tale, the Turia river had flooded a number of times over the last few hundred years, and the floods in 1957 caused enormous property damage and killed 81 people - after which the city council decided the river posed too much of a threat and decided to reroute it around the city. The drained river bed was then turned into the Turia Garden, which has a number of parks and entertainment installations, and was one of the highlights of our trip. As you might imagine there’s a lot more to the story, including complaints from the folk impacted by the reroute, as well as the later damages caused by the rerouted river in 2024. Some interesting history there which I leave as an exercise to the reader.
Anna and I loved running along here and enjoyed the cool mornings and shade on a short jog almost every morning. We also brought Emily here, where we walked to Parc Gulliver, which is a giant structure of a man that had slides and stairs all over it as a play area. Emily was a fan of this park, however it was pretty warm that day, and the material that the structure was made of radiated heat, so after about an hour and a half, she was bright red, sweaty and worn out so we made our escape and went in search of gelato afterwards.
Ciutat de les Arts i de les Ciències
The City of Arts and Sciences is a compound located alongside the Turia Garden, and includes many iconic buildings, sculptures and a bridge that are all done up to look futuristic. We ran by it a few times, and had already planned to visit the Science Museum and Oceanographic.
Note that it is worth buying tickets ahead of time, though we struggled to get the site to work and just ended up buying tickets at the ticket office, they did let us get the combo ticket with times for the Oceanographic and Science museum on different days, it just took an extra 20 minutes or so standing in line to get that sorted when we arrived.
L'Oceanogràfic
Oceanographic is the largest aquarium in Europe, but we didn’t know this when we bought our tickets, we just thought it would be a fun activity for a day. We took the bus down from our AirBnB, signed up for our tickets, and then walked into the park. As responsible parents, we aimed for the nearest bathroom which turned out to be downstairs in the main building, but we hardly made it down the stairs before our minds were already blown by how cool the space was - and we hadn’t really even seen any of it yet. Emily just wanted to stay glued to the first tank on the entry which had a large glass wall on the side that you could watch small sharks and fish swim around - Anna went and used the potty then took Emily while I tried to wrap my head around the paper map they gave me, which wasn’t very useful even if I did understand more of the language - but I think in part I just didn’t quite grasp the scale of the place even then.
Refreshed after using the toilets, we started to explore the underground section of the main building, and realized that it had tunnels going in multiple different directions, some tanks holding fish from one region of the world and others holding the larger fish and sharks .. after a while Emily started pulling ahead and then we ended up going through an incredible, giant underwater glass tunnel, bigger than anything I’ve ever seen like it - with sharks going around you on either side and above you while you walked through this thing. The underground complex was sort of a spoke-and-hub where the spoke in this case was the underwater tunnel between two hubs, which then branched off in different directions and had stairs back to the surface. Emily saw the stairs and decided this would be a good time to go up!
Once back on the surface, we decided to try to find the Dolphins. This was when we started to realize just how massive this place was. We kept following the map, walking towards the back right corner of the park, to try to find the dolphins, and kept having to go around yet another exhibit to get back on the path towards the dolphins. I kept expecting to see them hop up out of the water, but never seemed to find any large water tank before the stadium in the next complex over. Walking further and further around the arctic exhibit, and another Flamingo exhibit (there were two, of course), and I was convinced we must have missed it … until I realized that the stadium I’d been seeing off in the distance was not actually outside the park, that was PART of the park, and that is where the dolphins lived! Wow. OK, so we walked into the Dolphinarium, as the stadium is called, and realized we were about to see a dolphin show (in about 45 minutes). Anna grabbed some seats, I went back out and grabbed some food, and we watched their show! Pretty amazing spectacle, I’d never been to Seaworld in Orlando so I’m not sure how it compares, but it was definitely a cool show and worth it if you happen to be in the area! They had the trainers get them to jump up in sequence, in series, and in parallel, doing tricks, flips, 360s and twirls, before the final act where the trainers themselves flew across the water at high speed on the back of the dolphins! Throughout the show they also had interactive trivia as well as some info on climate change and what individuals can do to make a small difference on their own, which I appreciated.
After the Dolphin show, we walked back around to see the sharks, and then it was about time to get out of the heat, so we found our way out of the park and went back to the AirBnB.
Science museum
Two days later we came back for the Science part of the park, and that was pretty cool too - unfortunately it was very crowded with kids groups, and the building was quite large so we only got to walk around the second level. Emily and Anna went into a small-kids area, which then closed their doors once they reached capacity, so I used that time to walk around the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit, which had a whole section on all the spectral analysis, xrays and infrared imagery they’d done on the Mona Lisa painting, as well as a separate section on some of his interesting war machine inventions.
Other than the City of Arts and Sciences, and the Paella class I already posted about, we did a few other day trips around Valencia such as visiting Mercat Central in the town center, going to the beach (Platja de Llevant), had a date night with a babysitter from Tripsitta watching Emily, and I even found a Pacific Northwest inspired bar called Portland Ale House. It was around this time that I was seriously wondering how I could move outright to Valencia, suffice it to say we were charmed!
Now, our next stop was originally supposed to be Sevilla, but we were looking at the forecast right before our stay in Valencia and realized that it was going to be 110 degrees in Sevilla, and we weren’t going to have easy access to a pool or a beach … so we called an audible and canceled our Sevilla reservations, going to Mallorca instead. We do think there are things we missed out on in Sevilla, and I’ll definitely plan to go there next time I have a chance to spend some real time in Spain, but maybe not in June in the middle of a heat wave! We had no regrets with our choices to go to Mallorca though!
Mallorca
It was an easy flight from Valencia to Palma, and right up until the time we got to the rental car counter, it was a smooth travel day! I would say don’t go with Recordgo for your rental car, even though it was considerably cheaper than the alternatives, it’s not worth it when you have to spend an hour or two in line, without air conditioning, to get your car keys once you arrive. A couple hours later though once we had our car and were on the road, everything was back on track! We still managed to get to Ses Salines on time.
Anna had found an old stone cottage with a pool in a quiet little town called Ses Salines. This place was amazing. I still can’t really get a gauge on how old the cottage was, it looked like it could easily have been from the early 1900’s, big stone bricks, a well in the center of the yard, old brick outbuilding - but at the same time had lots of outlets and plumbing so I suspect it’s a much more modern property that was just done up to LOOK old. The kitchen was redone with modern appliances and I even had sharp knives to use! In addition to the AirBnB being great, we were just a block off the main street (which is really a main couple blocks), which had some fantastic local restaurants and two bakeries, which we took full advantage of by having some great meals out and fresh baked goods for our breakfasts in the morning!
The food in Mallorca was quite tasty - we had a couple great meals in the local restaurants, Es Magatzem, and Triple restaurant. I think I got the Pulpo (Octopus) at Es Magatzem, and I just had a burger at Triple (The burger itself was great, if not particularly Spanish, but the drinks were amazing, and Emily loved the giant teddy bears they had all over the property). We ate at a few other places in town too, and it was all pretty consistently good! Even our first spot, which was more of a wine bar with Tapas (which was very small servings and apparently reheated according to some reviews), but was quite enjoyable and reasonably priced!
Mallorca had some of the most amazing beaches I’ve ever been on, and we didn’t even really get to the iconic looking ones on the east coast of the island. I really wanted to go to Cala Llombards to see a gorgeous beach in between cliffs, we intended to get over to that side, but the one time we tried to adventure over there, almost immediately after finding a spot to drop our towels and get into the water, we realized there were a ton of jellyfish in the waves. They were pretty jellyfish, but I was nervous (especially with Emily there and having gone swimming in Australia with Box Jellyfish), so we got out of the water and I went back to look them up on my phone. I’d found a news article about some recently spotted stinging ones around Mallorca, and there were a lot of them, so while I didn’t think we were in any serious mortal danger, I also didn’t particularly want to find out how bad their sting was first hand, or let Emily get stung. So we left.
The other beaches we tried, while they didn’t have the iconic cliffs on either side, were incredible just for how calm the water was, and how there were fish that just swam around you the whole time and you didn’t even need a snorkel and goggles to see them. The three I remember were: Es trenc, es port, Platja estanys
Am I a beach person? Platja Estanys, the water was so calm and so clear, it was like scuba diving or snorkeling even when just walking around above the water. This was so calm and relaxing and chill, and Emily was having a great time collecting shells and running back in and out of the water. We definitely left wondering if this is a place we should return and spend even more time at.
While on this island, though, we had a rental car and figured we should check out some of the famous stops on the west coast. We tried to get tickets for the tram in Soller but realized that it was going to be a major ordeal, with parking so far out, and so many people in the town, so we skipped that part of the trip. We did go visit Valldemossa though- which is a mountain town with lots of pretty hills that have hikes all around the city - we saw lots of backpacker hostels and folks with big packs obviously gearing up for some hikes. Michael Douglas apparently loved this place, bought an estate there and has narrated some of the local museums’ english translations of their audio guides.
On our last full day we also visited Palma which was pretty gorgeous and has some fun history as well - mostly, though, we ate, drank, shopped and had ice cream.
Granada
After our magical island vacation on Mallorca, it was back to the mainland to face the heat head on. We flew into Granada where we were staying somewhere that looked really close to the Alhambra on paper - but once we arrived, we were told not to bother trying to walk to it from there! It was straight up a hill! The city itself seemed … red! I mean, like when you visit Utah or Scottsdale, and all the rock is red - it seemed that was the color of the entire city, except for the houses that were painted white. At least that was my first impression. And the doors all had a medieval feel, metal knobs every few inches, looked reinforced against battering rams although these were way more modern so it was just a stylistic choice, but it did conjure up the idea that the style came from it’s days as a fortress in the early 1300’s.
As with our other Spanish cities, we enjoyed the Sangria and Tapas offerings in many of the local restaurants near our lodging. One of the restaurants near us was a Moroccan place called Reina Mónica that Anna had read about, and the Tajin we had there was magical. We tried to find other places with similar dishes but they didn’t hold up- this place was the real deal. Their Tajin de Ternera (beef) had raisins and caramelized sauce in it that just seemed decadent, and their house salad was likewise an amazing and luxurious dish, with candied nuts and avocado and divine dressing that combined to be incredibly satisfying and filling.
Feria del Corpus Christi
The week we were in Granada, they had a fair for the Corpus Christi festival, so on the last day of the fair we took a cab to the fairgrounds to check it out. I expected it to be similar to a state fair in the US, and while it had some similarities, it was not at all what I expected. The layout of the fairgrounds was broken into three different areas. The rides, the food, and the party tents. It was still very sunny and hot, so we opted not to go to the rides (plus Emily was likely too small and young for most of them). And the various food vendors were mostly closed, as it was only 4:30 PM (and everything in Spain seems to shut between 3 and 8 pm…) so we mostly just walked around the casetas area. Each Caseta was sponsored by some business or group, and had their own style, bars, music, table layout and whatnot. We visited a few of them- the first one had a lot of people, and we purchased a couple of drink tokens, which they promptly mixed up. I asked for a vino blanco and got a vodka soda. Shrug! But after wandering around quite a bit, we saw many people very dressed up, quite a few men riding horses and women riding in carriages, though we couldn’t tell exactly what they were supposed to represent. And then we went to the next caseta, finding each party to have its own vibe and organization. For instance the rest of them took cards and not drink tokens, or had sit down tables and bartenders …
Most of the casetas were not very busy (again we were there around 5 or so) - but apparently the party really got going later, as when Anna went out for a run / walk the next morning around 6 AM, she said some folk dressed up the same way as we’d seen the day before at the festival were just coming home.
After reflection, I realized it reminded me more of Oktoberfest in Munich than any other fair I’d been to- the Casetas similar to the beer tents, though I suppose the difference was Oktoberfest was busy with folk claiming their spots at 8:30 AM and this party was still quite chill until much much later.
Alhambra, Nasrid palace and Generalife
The Alhambra is one of the main tourist attractions in Granada, and is visible on the hills above from most of the city. It’s important to get timed tickets to the Nasrid palaces well in advance of your trip. We luckily grabbed the last early morning timeslot of one of the days we were visiting, and were super glad we did- both because of the heat and the fact that we were able to enjoy some of the later rooms of the palace all to ourselves! (Thanks to Emily for running through the first half of the palace). This was an incredible place to visit - nearly the scale of the Palace of Versaille, though not anywhere near as ornate or flashy, this was the last major Muslim stronghold in western Europe, and was held from late 13th to turn of the 15th century, and as such the architecture of the palace and other buildings in the Alhambra showed the influence of different architectural and design styles that were in vogue during different times over that period of time. Some of the architectural styles as well as some of the mudejar art and designs that were used in the tile work on the various walls and ceilings, lead me to feeling a bit overwhelmed by just how much thought and care went into its construction.
Once you get through the main part of the palace, you get to the lower courtyards and the exit to the garden terraces, which are still maintained as various cut flower gardens so something is always in bloom. Emily loved running around these gardens, and once we left the Nasrid palace gardens, we wandered over to the Generalife area, where she made a friend who she played some hide and seek with. After this, we walked back to our AirBnB, which it turned out really WAS quite close, just down a very steep hill. We saw a handful of folk running UP the hill, and even mountain biking up the hill, which must just be a punishing workout, but on the way down was pretty and relaxing. Overall quite an enjoyable visit to the Alhambra and worth the time to do it!
Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción "La Cartuja"
The Cartuja monastery in Granada is considered one of the most beautifully decorated monasteries in Spain. It was one of the main stops on the Hop on/ hop off tour bus we traveled on, but since it was so hot around mid-day, we didn’t go on it as a group, instead I went back later in the day on my own to check it out. Much of the monastery had been destroyed but the main cathedral remains. The cathedral was built and improved upon over the course of hundreds of years so includes many different styles of architecture and design, including baroque and renaissance.
The main cathedral hall was a spectacle in itself, but nothing compared to the sacristy which has a sign proclaiming it to be the “most beautiful sacristy in the world”. Hard to argue when you see it.
Parque de las Ciencias
On another day we took Emily to the Parque de las Ciences and the Biodome in Granada. The science museum itself was fun, it had some pretty in depth exhibits on space travel, lizards, the human body, safety devices - I feel like I’d been to some pretty interesting science centers in the USA, but nothing compared to the depth that some of the Spanish science museums go into their various subjects. The human body exhibit had quite a few different sections where they had each of the different systems broken down into a display focused on just one system, such as models of the arteries, blow up of cells, organ systems, skeletal systems, reproductive systems, each in their own areas with interactive models, videos and displays. The Safety systems exhibit was even larger! Emily was a huge fan of the butterfly exhibit where we must have stayed for an hour. And the Biodome was pretty cool! We thought it was entertaining when they said not to feed the monkeys, but we did in fact have monkeys walk right around us on the path through the dome! This park exceeded our already high expectations.
Hop on/ hop off train
On one of the days we chose to ride the hop on/ hop off bus. In Granada, this was actually a train of three cars that ran around town, including driving right by our AirBnB. We rode it around the full loop, stopping off at a couple points to walk around the downtown area from a couple different directions. The route itself brought us around the perimeter of the main downtown area and on the outer extents it passed the Alhambra as well as the monastery on the other side. It wasn’t that great, but it also wasn’t that expensive and did have an audio guide in 12 languages you could listen in to, which had interesting tidbits of info such as talking about how most of the churches in the city were built on the sites of the mosques they tore down, and how many folk used to (and still do) live in caves up in the hills.
Sacromonte caves
Our last day in Granada, we spent walking from our AirBnB up the hill to the Sacromonte caves museum. This was something that Anna had found, and was just a 15 minute walk from where we were staying. The Cave Museum was pretty cool, they had 10 caves that were decorated as folk may have used them, with some displays of metal working tools, pottery, a loom and more, along with sign boards describing what living in the caves was like and some of the history of the area. The Sacromonte area has many houses and businesses that are built into the caves, and we went to one of them for a snack on our way back down the hill.
Flamenco dancing
People in Granada firmly believe that Flamenco started in Granada, in particular brought by the Romani living in Sacromonte caves in the 18th century. While walking around the city, we saw a few musicians out in the public squares practicing their Flamenco guitar work, and many restaurants had Flamenco shows on offer - so of course we went and saw one! Emily was convinced that she was going to be a part of the show, and came dressed for the part. Flamenco involves a lot of energetic tap dancing on small stages, though, so not exactly a kid friendly activity as she would likely have been stepped on! Once the show was over, though, she jumped up on the stage for her turn!
Granada, in the end, was quite an enjoyable location, and while when we first arrived we had no idea what we would do, with Emily, in the heat for 5 full days, we ended up filling them all and enjoying nearly every minute of it.
Segovia
First off, make sure you leave lots of extra time in Segovia if you take a train there. It seems like half the train unloads, so there are hundreds of people trying to get from the train station to the town center (which is apparently an 80 minute walk), but there are no taxis waiting and the only buses seem to run every 30 minutes - it took us 45 minutes to get onto a bus from the train station. Not a great intro to the city and we were a bit stressed because we had only 20 minutes from the town center to walk to the castle for our timed tickets. We thought we would have plenty of time to grab some lunch first but that did not happen. Once we actually got on the bus, though, things went much better for us.
Alcazar of Segovia
Alcazar of Segovia (Segovia Castle) is a medieval castle in Segovia, an amazing structure to view from afar and from within. This castle was the inspiration for Cinderella’s castle in Disney World. Since we are doing Disneyland for Emily’s 5th birthday later in August, and she’s big on some of the Disney princess movies, we thought we should visit it since it was only a 30 minute train from Madrid!
We booked Segovia Castle timed tickets for 12:00 and the tower for 1:00. Would suggest booking the tower at 30 minutes after you arrive, the castle isn’t honestly that big! Not like Nasrid Palace. And because we hadn’t eaten and had a limited amount of time in the town we almost didn’t wait for the tower climb. In the end we did, but not entirely sure it was worth the wait. The view from the top was pretty cool though if you have time, and doesn’t cost much more to get the tower addon.
The castle itself has some phenomenally beautiful rooms, including intricately painted glass windows, Moorish tilework, gothic arches, Mudejar art, and Islamic arches throughout - many of which I recognized since we had toured Alhambra. One of the most interesting rooms was the hall of the kings, which had a gallery of sculptures near the ceiling of many of the rulers of the region, each with a short inscription below them describing their reign. Another was the armory, which had many cannons, swords, pikes, suits of armor and more for your viewing pleasure.
Definitely worth a visit and left a grand impression of an amazing, historical European castle with a lot of character.
Aqueduct of Segovia
The Aqueduct was pretty amazing to see in person, much larger and possible to actually get to touch it, than the one we saw in Bar Montenegro. This Aqueduct is almost 2000 years old and was still in use to provide running water to some parts of Segovia until 1973. There are 167 arches in two rows, which run across the valley between two hills. There are lots of restaurants and a bus stop underneath the Aqueduct so it is a great place to visit if you’re already in the region.
Madrid
We saved Madrid for last, as it was the place that had the most options in terms of easy flights to other countries. And when we originally were booking this trip, we thought we’d be going to Denmark next which was much further north. We primarily wanted to get a bit more of the family, local, real vibe of the country out of Madrid, since the other spots we visited were more tourist-focused. I think we got a good feel for the place, but still didn’t quite come away with as strong of an impression of what exactly Madrid is, than maybe we did in some of the other cities.
Shopping
We checked out a few of the shopping areas - Gran Via, Chueca, Salamanca, looking for interesting Spanish brands of clothes beyond the two mainstays we see in the USA a lot - Zara and Cos, and the other popular stores that Anna likes such as Sezane, but our first couple of stops (Gran Via and Chueca) didn’t net the sort of haul we usually find in large foreign cities.
Once we got to Salamanca, though, that changed- there seemed to be about a 12 block area that was just wall to wall shops, and a couple days hardly seemed enough to visit them all!
I didn’t end up getting much, just a few shirts from Primark (which is a dangerous store! Holy moly, some of the shirts I got were 10 Euros! Anna had better luck, finding a few different dresses and skirts, some shirts, a bag - again, all quite reasonably priced.
Messy play
I had looked for some camp options for Emily so she had some time to play with other kids. She’d been saying she missed her friends in Seattle, and we did want to have her play with some kids who spoke Spanish while on this journey, to help her practice. However, I was having bad luck finding any options since we had booked our 9 days in Madrid over a weekend and not lining up with one calendar week, in addition to the fact that most Spanish schools didn’t begin their summer holidays until late June, so most of the week long programs I contacted either didn’t have any openings, hadn’t started yet, or wouldn’t hold a spot for us since it wasn’t for a whole week.
I’d given up on the idea, but Anna looked one more time and found Messy Play, which is sort of a drop-in daycare that had some 5 packs you could book. I contacted them and they were happy to take Emily over 5 days in two different weeks, so we signed her up. At first we didn’t have very high expectations, and told ourselves since it was reasonably priced, it wasn’t that big of a deal if Emily ended up not liking it. We needn’t have worried. Not only did Emily love it and want to keep going, the teachers loved Emily and offered us a discount and a free day if she wanted to keep going! (Unfortunately we were leaving to go to Stockholm the next day so couldn’t accept the offer)
While in the class, Emily obviously played with the other kids, had visits to a local park, did some arts and crafts like painting, clay, decorating a hat and a cape, and more. This made us realize Emily really did miss her old school and playing with other kids, so we are going to make more of an effort to fill her days with activities playing with other kids.
What to do in the heat on the weekend?
On one of the weekend days, we needed to get out and about, but it was going to be 100 degrees again! What should we do?! Well, we’d already scoped out the Sweet Space Museum, so we picked a day to go there and had tickets for the afternoon. However, we needed something to do in the morning, and our other ideas had all either been used or discarded, so Anna looked around and found the Museo Geominero (Fossil and Mineral museum), so we chose to go there in the morning.
Museo Geominero
Museo Geominero is in an impressive old building, but is pretty unassuming when you walk in- until you make it to the main room and realize just how massive this collection is. There are many fossils, minerals, rocks and gems organized by age and style, and while everything was in Spanish, most of the labels were pretty easy to understand. One of the most impressive things about the museum besides the breadth of specimens contained there was that every single mineral had the chemical breakdown, location found, estimated age and more, and it spanned so many different types of minerals and fossils. This was beyond anything I’d ever seen in the US (though I admittedly haven’t gone searching for library of minerals and fossils in the US, I imagine the Smithsonian may have something similar?) - I would say this was less of a tourist destination than a proper university or research scientist resource. Emily was mostly interested in running around the halls and the second and third floors of the building, so Anna chased her while I marveled at all the different exhibits.
I would say this further cemented my appreciation for how in depth some of the exhibits are in Spain’s various science museums. I guess I should also make more of an effort to visit similar places in the US! Seattle’s offerings are pretty limited but I haven’t been to Washington DC yet, nor many such museums in NYC. I did like the Natural History Museum in NYC but didn’t think it was quite as impressive.
After a while, Emily had had enough and we had to make it to lunch before going to the Sweet Space museum, so we said goodbye.
Sweet Space Museum
This kid activity was pretty similar in structure and format to the Ice cream museum in New York - basically a funhouse layout where they give you a different type of treat in each room. Worth a visit if you have a kid, and are trying to get out of the heat! It’s located in a mall but most of the mall was closed and/or uninteresting, so we pretty much just went there and then went back to the AirBnB afterwards.
Going out at night
We hired a babysitter through Tripsitta to watch Emily so we could go out on a date night. Originally we had a reservation for a local Tapas place, but changed our plans to just go on a bit of a wander, restaurant and neighborhood hopping to get more of a feel for the city, and we’re really glad that we did!
Our first main stop was the indoor food court market at Mercado de San Ildefonso. This was quite a bit smaller than I expected, but once you found the entrance and go up the stairs, the third floor had 14ish restaurants, each in a tiny little stall and with their own tapas style small plate offerings, varying from Mexican tacos, Peruvian dumplings, Korean street food, Sushi and more. We chose some Peruvian dumplings and skewers and were quite happy with them! It was also more food than we thought it would be- could probably have had one more plate and stopped there, but we wanted to keep exploring.
We walked for what seemed like another hour after that first round, up and down the shopping streets in Chueca, and as the night progressed (it was now around 9:30 PM) there were more and more people- I understand now the description of Madrid as having a vibrant culture as it just felt like there was an energy to the flow of people walking around - not like all for one event, either, where everyone’s lining up for a concert, but just general hubbub of activity of folk walking every which way, chatting with friends, excited about life and whatever destination they were walking towards.
After wandering a bit more we found a square with some tables outside to people watch and have another snack and beverage, which ironically was on the same block as the first market we went to a couple hours before - the San ildefonso square! This time we went to Cervecería La Junta, ordered some Sangria, a salad, and some shrimp tacos - not knowing it was going to be massive and come with a giant basket of bread! Quite tasty. As Anna said, her brother Mark would love the tacos as they were covered in something similar to sweet chili sauce.
Mercado de San Miguel
On our last day in Madrid, Anna and I went on another food adventure after dropping Emily off at Messy Play. We walked over to Mercado de San Miguel, and I have to say I’ve never seen such an amazing variety of Tapas under one roof! This place had many different cuisines, similar to the Mercado de San Ildefonso, but it was quite a bit larger and each stall was a full size market stall. Some focused on cured meats (iberico ham, sausages etc), while there were others for olives, pickled fish, sushi, Oysters, Pintxo’s, Skewers, tacos and more, plus a wide variety of bars to serve your beverage needs.
Apparently we were just there to take a look, but I was ready to just cancel all our other plans and perch up here for a couple hours! Anna gave in and we got a couple small plates- one stacked high with smoked salmon and a bao bun with Pulpo (octopus), grabbed a couple of beverages and sat down to enjoy. This market was more expensive than some of the Tapas places in the city, but for the variety and quality, was still pretty reasonably priced!
Overall impressions - Spain
Language
My Spanish comprehension is not very good at all! It’s one thing to think I had studied Spanish for 4 years in high school, and have a 1100 day streak on Duolingo - but quite another to go to Spain and expect to understand when people talk to you! I do think it would make a huge difference to live here for a while but many times when going beyond basic greetings I had to either ask for the English version or get out my phone to translate. I have learned a few of the common phrases much better though, such as how folk respond to questions and greetings - not so much the formal language you learn from practicing with an app, and how folk use pronouns, shorthand and the like (buenas, a ti, a luego, etc). I’m still generally glad that I’ve studied Spanish more recently, and that we spent as much time there as we did, though I doubt Emily picked much up as I’m pretty sure everyone she interacted with just spoke to her in English. Maybe some day we’ll live there, but probably not soon enough to help Emily learn the language fluently.
The food
Spanish food is pretty tasty, similar in a lot of ways to other Mediterranean food with lots of bread, olives, oil, and pickled fish, but Spanish Tapas is definitely its own scene and Pinxtos, Bocadillos, and Jamon Iberico seem to be prevalent nearly everywhere. And certainly folks already know this but while there’s the occasional taco or Mexican restaurant, Spanish and Mexican food seem to have very little in common.
Schedules
The “people eat late” thing is real- Many restaurants close between 3-8 PM, and while we tried to adapt a bit by stretching Emily’s bedtime later, we were lucky to get her to last till 6:30 for dinner, and she was very tired after the hot days and playing with other kids so bedtime was still 8:00 PM. It was amazing to be out around 10:30 and see tons of kids on the playgrounds even as the sun had already set, and while some of the super young kids in strollers were asleep, it seemed there were quite a few kids around 5 and up playing in the park at that time.
We definitely had a blast in Spain, and could have stayed quite a bit longer but for our need to carry on with our larger voyage, and the desire to get out of the heat!
Thanks again Spain and hope to see you again soon!
link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link