Spain Part II: Madrid day trips

 Saturday May 24 – Day trip to Toledo

We got up early to catch an Uber and then a bus (1.5 hours) to Toledo, the former capital. The old part of the city is situated on a large hill, which meant a hike from the bus station, though they also had some exterior escalators.

Once there, we did a walk around and went into the Alcazar, a fortress which is now a military museum. It was also very large and worthwhile, and included some ruins that are now enclosed by the new part of the museum.

After the Alcazar, we walked around the edge of the hill, which offered great views of the city.

We went down the hill and across a footbridge, up to an old monastery first built by the Teutonic Knights. It is now a youth hostel.

Down the hill and up the other side, it was time for a visit to the grand Toledo Cathedral.

Toledo is known as a city where Jews, Muslims and Christians have lived in relative harmony, notable given the conflicts between this groups in Spanish history. We walked around and found another nice church, as well as the Jewish quarter, which is signalled by special pavement tiles and markings.

Toledo also contains some relatively recently-discovered Roman baths. This was worth a free and brief view.

There is a special goat cheese in Toledo called Montego that Nancy wanted to try after some reviews from co-workers. She  got some cheese from the “cheese museum” as well as a as special cheesecake.

We wandered around a bit more, but it was getting on, including coming across a religious procession to a nearby church, so we headed back to the bus station at around 8 PM and caught a bus back to Madrid, caught and Uber and went back to the hotel.

Sunday May 26 – Day trip to Segovia

We were up early again to catch the regional train to Segovia (1.5 hours). Once there, we wandered around and found the old bullring (which is still in occasional use).

We walked down to the bus station and after some confusion, found our bus to La Granja de San Ilefonso, a former royal summer palace 10 km from Segovia. A lot of the palace is open for viewing. Most of the lower floor ("public") rooms were essentially to hold themed collections of art. I assume they were empty most of the time if there were no royal visitors. 

The main feature of the palace is its sprawling gardens. Owing to time constraints we only took a short walk around them but could have spent all day there. There weren’t enough flowers for Nancy to enjoy (mainly fountains, trees and shrubs) but I liked them.

After the bus back to Segovia, we went for a walk up another hill to the historic heart of the city, and around the cathedral, past the canonry (former residence of the cathedral canons):

and to the beautiful Alcazar, a fortress and royal palace that is now an excellent museum.

We were able to go up to the top of the Tower of John II in the Alcazar, which had great views of the city, in particular the cathedral.

We doubled back to briefly see the cathedral, which, while beautiful, was not as spectacular as Toledo’s. However, because it is built on the top of a hill instead of on the side of it, it is easier to get views of it from the outside. Still, I can usually not resist a cathedral.

The final stop of the day was the main reason for coming to Segovia – the extant Roman aqueduct bridge of almost 1 km. The aqueduct conveyed drinking water from the mountains some 17 km away, was built around 100 AD, and was being used for its original purpose into the 1800s. It is built of unmortared bricks held in place by their weight only. Such feats of Roman engineering were not surpassed for a thousand years. There is a significant tourism presence around the aqueduct, with a fair and lots of “Roman” (I use the term loosely)-themed shops.

A cab to the high-speed rail station located some distance outside of the city capped off our day, where we took a 20-minute train ride on high-speed rail (my first trip on such a machine, travelling 250 km/h) back to Madrid and then took the metro home.

Spain part I: Madrid

 Tuesday May 20

Jude arrived at about 4 PM the day before. We had pizza while we finished packing (I had got back from my bike trip late on Sunday night) and she drove us to the airport. We go through security quickly. I had some free lounge passes so went to the aiport lounge – first time doing that. It’s a much nicer place to wait – had free drinks and a breakfast buffet while waiting to board. The flight to Toronto was uneventful and I got wifi to work on my university class that is coming up, and once there, I used more lounge passes and had more drinks and another buffet while I did some more prep work since the class starts right after we get back. I got pretty far along, which is nice as I don’t have to think about it for the rest of the trip.

Wednesday May 21

Uneventful flight to Madrid. Nancy slept some and we both played a strangely addictive in-flight trivia game.

We got in around noon and took some time to figure out the transit trip to downtown, then took some time figuring out our hotel. We were early for check-in but were able to drop off our bags in our lodgings, which were sort of an efficiency apartment with a small washing machine, dishwasher, fridge and hotplate. The place is a bit away from the main sights (~20-minute walk) but is quiet and otherwise nice.

I had low expectations of Madrid but it (or at least the city centre) is quite beautiful, with lots of amazing buildings to marvel at. We spent some time wandering around the city, including the main shopping street, Gran Via.

We walked around for a bit, including the impressive national library:

 but owing to the fact that I hadn’t slept for 24 hours after biking for three days in the mountains, we both went back to the hotel and sleep after having a snack at “100 Mondaditos”, which is a chain of tapas-type fast food bar that claim to have 100 items for ~€1 each.

Then it was another adventure on the bus to Las Ventas, the largest bullring in Spain, to take in a bullfight (in the hot and cheap section). I did not know what to expect, but the program is essentially a highly ritualized slaughter. Beforehand of course it was time for some ice cream from a vendor outside.

There are three bullfighters, who fight two bulls each. There is an entrance ceremony, and for each bull, the bull is released and runs around the ring. 

The mandator and his assistants take turns waving blankets to attract the bull, then hide behind blinds where the bull can’t get them as it’s quite aggressive. This is to test the bull, its strength, if it favours one part of the ring, etc.

The next part is when two special assistants with long lances come out on heavily armoured/padded and blindfolded horses. The bull charges the horse and tries the push it over. The assistant stabs the bull in the shoulder a couple of times (usually this takes a few charges of the bull) in order to weaken it, start it bleeding and enrage it.

Then comes the mandator’s assistants (banderilleros) and the bullfighter himself. The assistants work as a group to get the bull to charge using large blankets/capes and waving them at the bull, then one of them plants a series of barbs into the bull’s back, to enrage/weaken the bull for the final stage. This can go on for a while depending on how successful the banderilleros are at placing the barbs as they sometimes don’t attach or fall out.

The final stage is the actual fight with the mandator vs. the bull. The bullfighter comes out alone and does a series of passes, waving a blanket at the bull in order to get it to charge him but not touch/hurt him. There is a wide latitude for some theatrics here and the crowd seemed to know when the mandator did a particularly difficult or dangerous move (we did not) and cheered/booed accordingly.

After the bull is sufficiently tired, the bullfighter gets a big sword from an assistant and stabs the bull vertically in the neck area. It takes a while for the bull to die, and usually one of the assistants comes out with and stabs the weakened bull (who at this point has usually laid down from pain/exhaustion) and with a small knife, stabs the bull in the neck a time or two until it rolls over and dies. Then a mule-drawn wagon comes out and drags the bull away and the whole procedure repeats again with a different bullfighter and bull.

This spectacle has been outlawed in many countries over probably justified animal cruelty protestations. In Spain though it seems quite popular. Our midweek bullfight saw Las Ventas mostly full with plenty of crowd participation and not many looked like tourists.

After the bullfight, we took a bus home and it was off to bed.

Thursday May 22

We first visited Retiro Park. This enormous and spectacular park used to be a private park of the royal family but at some point was gifted to the state. We spent the morning walking around the park, looking at the special rose gardens and marveling at the trees, ponds and sculptures. There are some buildings there, such as a crystal palace (sadly undergoing restoration works) and some fantastic monuments. It was a pleasant place to relax after a day of travel and bullfighting.

After the park, we went to one of Madrid’s premier art museums, the Thyssen Museum. It was the private collection of a German industrialist and his family, and his son sold some of it to Spain while many other pieces are on loan from the family’s personal collection. The museum is huge and it some time to go through it. It encompasses work from old masters up to modern times (the newest piece we saw was from 2023), including Rothko, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso and others.

In the late afternoon, we went to the naval museum, which is attached to the current navy headquarters. It was a neat museum and deceivingly large. There are lots of cool artifacts and ship models on display, owing to the Spanish Navy’s long history and role in shaping in the country, from defence to exploration to its vast overseas empire.

We got on an open-top bus tour of the historic part of the city. (It used to be hop-on, hop-off but due to municipal regulations this is no longer allowed). We had seen much of it walking around on our own but I think these tours are a good orientation regardless.

We had previously booked tickets to a drone art show. This is taking the place of fireworks in some places. We took a couple of stressful busses out to the Madrid Hippodrome, a racetrack near the perimeter of the city. A string quartet on a stage played various popular classical works (Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, etc.) while a collection of drones flew around and formed patterns in the night sky in theme to the music (e.g. the theme from Swan Lake was in the shape of a swan). I was a bit skeptical about it but ended up enjoying this.

On the way home I learned a Spanish word - pinchado (flat tire) because our Uber got one on the highway. That added a bit of excitement and made it a late night.

Friday May 23

In the morning, we walked to the starting point for the second bus tour (making the most of our 24-hour ticket), this time of the modern city. It included a visit to the Real Madrid stadium, which we made a note of as Nancy wanted to pick up some soccer kit for her nephews.

We spent a bit more time walking around the city centre and briefly visited a church near the Thyssen museum we had seen the day before. 

In the afternoon, we had a group tour of the Royal Palace, which was very good. It is the second-largest palace in Europe, after Naples, according to the tour guide. The palace was rebuilt by the Bourbon monarchs after a fire. This French dynasty took over the crown of Spain after the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), and Versailles served as inspiration. 

After the royal palace, we visited the Madrid Cathedral, which is right next door. It is a newer cathedral, having been finished only in 1993 (it contains a chapel for St. John Paul II, who was only made a saint in 2014, and who consecrated the cathedral). It has a great altar, but otherwise is relatively unremarkable as much of it is fairly modern in style).

We then walked to the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple which was shipped from Egypt as part of a project to clear an area for the creation of a dam on the Nile River. It was reassembled in central Madrid. Tickets for this had to be booked in advance, which we didn’t know, and everything was booked for several days. However, one of the great things about travelling with Nancy is that everyone wants to help her and she was able to use her language skills to get us in the door after a bit of a wait. It was better than expected inside (and free), with some displays of the area where the temple came from, actual hieroglyphics still discernable on the walls, and an audio-visual display.

After the temple, we had time enough to walk back to the historic downtown, through the Gran Via. The gift shop at the naval museum was closed the day before so we went there as Nancy wanted to look for gifts. (I got some cufflinks and a t-shirt and Nancy got a compass).

We went to the Cibeles Palace, which is my favourite-looking building in the city and now hosts some exhibition spaces and a tourist info centre (was previously a post & telegraph office officially called the Palace of Communications & nicknamed “Our Lady of Communications” for its size and scale given its humble purpose). 

We went up to the observation deck on the tower for a look over the city.

After that we went to pick up the soccer stuff for Nancy’s nephews. She got them all customized so it took a while.

Other

The weather has been uniformly hot, cooling to perhaps 13-15C overnight with highs during the day being in the low 30s with little cloud cover. We have been pretty busy but are hitting lots of things and making good use of our time.