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| Madrid’s Royal Palace |
By the time you read this, we’ll have moved on to Valencia, Spain where we’ll be until early August. There are a number of blogs on what we saw and did in Madrid coming, but this being our first visit to the capital of Spain, we thought we’d inject our first impressions of Madrid before those blogs come your way.
Cities often have a unique character. Anyone who has been to New Orleans, Boston, or San Francisco knows what I’m talking about. We like to get a feel for that character when we visit a city for the first time, and we try to think beyond the stereotypes and the expectations set for us in the guidebooks.
Let’s try and describe Madrid this way: imagine we’re back in High School. Paris is the beautiful, popular girl that everyone has a crush on or wants to be friends with. London is the gregarious, outgoing girl that makes you laugh and is endlessly fun to be around. Rome is the smart girl, the thought-provoking conversationalist who is intently focused on her—and your, if your lucky—destiny. Madrid is the simple, sultry girl you didn’t think much about at first, but suddenly you realize you really, really like her and you want to spend more time with her.
Madrid sneaks up on you. Madrid seduces you. Our first day wanderings left us with the impression that she is “just another big city”. The architecture, at least where we stayed (off the Grand Via near the Plaza España), seemed more French than Spanish. Madrid appeared to be a sea of twelve-story apartment and office buildings and hotels, a frenetic blend of pedestrians, traffic, buses, and scooters amidst the handful of must-see sites like the Royal Palace and the museums.
Then you spend evenings in the tapas bars, side by side with the Madrileños (what people from Madrid call themselves) sipping wine or beer, laughing, and enjoying (what sounds like) great conversation. Tapas are like fast food: little samples, small plates, appetizers that you order just enough of to fuel your conversation and to nibble on between beers or wine. After a couple of nights, you’re spending a couple of hours hovering over calamares, frites, patatas bravas, or some unknown—but delicious—creamy salad on a piece of bread, bruschetta style. I’ll have to save the praise for Spanish wine for another blog.
As you settle into a routine, you begin to notice Madrileños are cordial and friendly and affable. They crowd into the bars to enjoy World Cup matches without getting rowdy or overly loud. They rarely admit they speak English, but somehow you can communicate with them: they smile at your lame attempts at Spanish, but they get your pantomimes and manage to come up with more English than you can come up with Spanish. They wave politely when you pause to let them drive through a pedestrian-crowded intersection. They fill their city parks every evening, meeting friends or family, quietly enjoying each other’s company, and sometimes (as Lori calls it) canoodling.
First impressions might be important, but sometimes they’re just not correct. One day we’ll have to ask Madrid out again and see what happens.
