Today is our one and only full day in Madrid! Rosie and The Operator cannot wait to have a look around! In the Old Town the traffic is restricted, the roads narrowed and the buildings got taller with spires and promises of awesomeness peeping out everywhere.
Each of the streets in the Old Town has a beautiful hand painted ceramic sign showing a picture of what the street was named after, here is the Street of the Embroiderers where most of them lived and worked back in the day. The signs are beautiful and if you cannot read the Spanish at least the picture gives you a good guess as to the streets name.
You can also buy miniature tiles in varying sizes as souvenirs to take home.
The strangest sign Rosie saw? Yes that is an Elbow….Street of the Elbow, see, the picture is quite literal as is the name of the street, a street with a bend, like an elbow.
The Royal Palace was our first stop of the day and also hundreds of school children’s. It is still the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family today and the building boasts 3418 rooms over a 135,000 square meter floor plan.
It would be easy to get lost in there on your way to the loo! Considering there are 870 windows to shut every night, 240 sets of balconies with doors to check and 44 staircases to climb whilst doing that, it would be a big job locking up every night. The Royal family, quite rightly opted to live in smaller digs and only use the palace on state occasions.
The Palace is huge, the largest Royal Palace in Europe in fact. This is only one tiny portion…No way Rosie can fit it all in her camera! And these pics are only a smidge of the two-dimensional front face. Rosie pinched a pic off the interweb to show you all where the rest of the rooms are located. Incredible isn’t it?
The palace was built in the 17th Century and is totally lavish and awe inspiring inside. Sweeping gigantic marble staircases, a grand golden throne room, feasting hall and a fantastic ornamental garden that stretches on for as far as the eye can see with miles of box hedge and fountains. These pics are from the tiny garden in front of the main doors where my pics were taken from.
We planned on visiting….but the queue for tickets on opening was tragically long and it never got any shorter during the day.
So…. next door we walked to the Madrid Cathedral. The Cathedral looks impressive facing the Royal Palace with a large courtyard between them. This is the line of people who were buying tickets to enter the Palace…..now you get it.
When the Palace was built, talk started about building a complementary Cathedral, plans were shelved for a couple of hundred of years due to priority being given to the building of churches in the Spanish colonies instead. In 1883 the foundation stone of the Cathedral was finally laid, progress was slow and it wasn’t till 1993 that the cathedral was deemed finished and finally consecrated by Pope John Paul 2.
This church is built in a Gothic design and is very modern, filled with light and brightly coloured. It is quite minimal in its modern design and a little underwhelming for Madrids greatest Cathedral.
The alter is beautiful and multi-storeyed, plus you are allowed to climb the stairs to get a closer look at the intricate detail.
The Crypt, finished in 1911 is right next door….and built above ground. Enter through the beautiful front door…past the security desk, oh yes, she was watching alright…and enter the Crypt proper.
In true Crypt style, it is so dark, windowless and cavernous you wouldn’t believe you were above ground. The air is cool and lighting so gloomy you cannot quite see to the end of the dimly lit colonnaded corridor.
Between each of these pillars is an eye opening surprise, each space houses a crypt and each is so richly decorated and breathtakingly beautiful.
After squinting into the gloom The Operator worked out how to turn on the timed sensor lights to illuminate the dark spaces of the crypts….thats when we truly appreciated how richly decorated and breathtakingly beautiful they really were! My photos still don’t do them justice!
These enclaves not only hold the burial tombs of some of Madrid’s most noble families……but are small chapels in their own rights. Encased behind wrought iron gates, they contain beautiful alters, with paintings and statues. Some have stacks of stone sarcophagus lining the walls and others have internment space neiched into the wall. Remember, this crypt was only finished in 1911….so they are not ancient families, they are modern nobility and famous persons.
Just a few steps down from the Crypt is the remains of the Arabian Wall. This wall is the remains of the oldest construction in Madrid. Built by the Muslims that controlled the area in the 9th century it was part of their fort and the base from where the city grew. There is not much to see, Rosie would have liked to enter the small park like area and touch the ancient wall, but it was closed off to the public.
Rosie and The Operator were feeling a little peckish, so off we went to visit the Mercado de San Miguel. It is a hot spot for tourists and is just across the road from where we are staying in Madrid.
Outside, tourists and locals were sitting in warm jackets and scarves enjoying the newly opened outdoor terraces and soaking up the warm weak spring sunshine. Rearing over them, the iron and glass market is quite modern and striking looking. It was built in 1916, on a rundown derelict site by the local people as a food market to enliven and reinvigorate their area of town. Nowadays it is described as the cities gastronomic temple and houses over 30 permanent food stalls and has over 10 million visitors a year pass through its halls to sample some of the best examples of Spanish food from all areas of Spain.
Inside it was uncomfortably heaving, but here it is all about the food and it was glorious. Such an array of colour and choice. Pick and match what you want to eat, from a variety of different stalls…….in true tapas style.
Then pick a bar for your drink….our choice is the delicious sweet vermouth which is locally made and sold from the tap. Settle in wherever you can find a free spot to consume your snack and watch the chaos around you.
Sitting nestled in the pretty, small, Plaza de Ville is the Old Town Hall of Madrid. This area is one of the oldest in town and the squares three sides show examples of awesomely preserved 16th century Spanish architecture that looks right out of a Mexican Western The Operator reckoned.
These buildings were the permanent seat of Madrids City government from the Middle Ages until recent times when the city council was relocated into new buildings. The building with the tower also acted as the towns prison and its most famous prisoner was the French King Francois I after his capture in battle in 1525. It was said as he was paraded through Madrid to his new home in the prison that the locals were more impressed by the splendidly attired Frenchman than they were by their ruling captor The Spanish King Carlos I, much to the displeasure of the latter.
Leading off this Plaza is the Street of the Elbow…yes, Rosie has already mentioned this street, and this is where it is, leading to the best non story ever!
Down the alley and round the corner, behind the door below lives a sect of cloistered nuns. They never go out in public and have remained enclosed in this monastery for decades with only themselves for company.
To make money, they bake and sell biscuits…ring the buzzer and the door opens…you walk down a corridor to the end where there is a big door with a turntable built into it…the cookies are on the turntable….take what you want, put your money on the turntable. Job done. Rosie was all excited to give this a whirl… WHAT! No cookies till Monday! No way, gutted.
Well, off to lunch we go then. Rosie and The Operator booked this restaurant before we came to Madrid, we have been wanting to try this Spanish specialty for a long time…we hope it does not disappoint.
Welcome to the Restaurante Sobrino de Botin! This restaurant has the distinction of being the oldest restaurant in the world. Yes. It’s True! There is a Guinness World Records Certificate in the window to prove that this place has been running continuously as a restaurant since it was founded in 1725.
Rosie and The Operator have been salivating about the day we could try this Spanish specialty…slow cooked, baby suckling pig. A baby milk fed piglet, taken from its mothers teat, butterflied and roasted in the oven of The Worlds Oldest Restaurant. Bet your mouth is watering too…
Walking in, the decor is beautiful, olde worlde, low ceilinged and spread over three floors. We started lunch as per the Spanish norm at 2.30. By 3.00 pm the place was full, so glad we booked.
It’s all about the pig here…and the original, wood fired, cast iron oven from 1725 that it’s cooked in. During the week, the chef says they go through 50 piglets daily. On the weekend…..75 per day.
The butterflied piglet is first roasted for two hours, then shelved until required. It is then reheated where the skin, during this cook, gets nice and crispy.
This was Rosie and The Operators meal of the day, we were going to make the most of this and opted for the Menu de Casa which started with a traditional Garlic Soup.
It was so tasty, and filling. The thick soup consisted of slices of garlic, ham and bread topped with a runny quails egg. In true Spanish style this traditional soup would have been made with the families left over stale bread so nothing would be wasted.
Next came the pig, it was carried out to the dining room on a platter and then carved by the waiters and the meat distributed between multiple tables. Unless of course you had enough people at your table to eat the whole platter. Rosie got the piggy tail and the pork was just delicious! So very moist, delicate and tender… it just fell off the tiny ribs and melted in your mouth. It was everything we thought it would be!
But wait, there is more! Below ground is the original cellar which has been converted into a dining room. At the end of the room is a tiny doorway that leads further down to the ancient wine cellar, we asked if we could go down for a nosey…not a problem.
The food and atmosphere were just amazing! Three quarters of the lunchtime clientele were Spanish and Rosie and The Operator highly recommend this restaurant, but book in advance, its busy.
We slowly walked with full bellies back towards home and then stopped into the Plaza Mayor! Through the arch we go, and there it is, the grand all encompassing, Plaza Mayor, once the beating heart of Spain. A grand square built in 1580 that was the center for all events in the city.
The square was built during the Hapsburg Period of Phillip the Thirds reign, the original Royal Palace is the center piece of the Square. Back in the day noble people lived in the apartments that surround the square. Today, they are still apartments, for us normal folk.
The square held the daily food market and shops were in the surrounding lower buildings just as they are still today. In 1673, King Carlos II issued an edict allowing vendors to be able to raise tarpaulins above their stalls to protect their wares and themselves from the refuse and raw sewerage that people habitually tossed from the windows above.
The square was also turned into a bull ring where massive fights were held in celebration of royal weddings or births with said royalty and nobility watching from the balconies and up to 50,000 people crammed into the plaza.
The square also has a darker side, as a place of mass executions during the Spanish Inquisition where hangings, burning at the stake and garrottings were numerous.
Leaving the square through the great arches the buildings in the street backing onto the Plaza Mayor appear to be slightly concave….yes, they are, it is not a trick of Rosies camera. It is said that the buildings on this street back onto the royal apartments in the Plaza and help support them from falling.
Wandering back through the old town, Rosie and The Operator are keen on visiting The Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales or The Monastory Of The Royal Barefooted. It has a great back story and is supposed to be pretty amazing because of it.
You can only enter with a guided tour so Rosie and The Operator wanted to be at the gates for when they reopened after lunch to be first in the queue. Alas, it was another not to be….all of the afternoon tours were full today because it was a free entry day for locals….oh, come on people, we are tourists who have come a long way and don’t mind paying….bugger the non paying locals…they can come another day!
Taunted by the great story of the cloister where widowed noblewoman lived once upon a time, becoming nuns upon the deaths of their husbands. Where each of the woman bought with them their wedding dowry and their riches which quickly piled up over time due to a lot of noble mans deaths.
The wealth and luxury inside this unimposing building is supposed to be jaw dropping….yet by the 20th Century the remaining nuns lived here in poverty, yet the church would not allow them to sell any of the riches….the pope instead gave a dispensation to the order of nuns to open their doors to the public and that was how they were allowed to make a living.
Rosie wanted to see the amazing antique wealth these poor nuns live in….gutted there were no tickets left on the day! Doubly gutted when a guy came out of the building and told us how amazing it was.
Rosie and The Operator have loved their very brief stay in Madrid! It is an amazing place and huge place, were we have barely scratched the surface of this city. We will however, have some great memories of this stop over even though we were a little unlucky with some of our non-visitations.
Tomorrow we are driving to Porto in Portugal, we are looking forward to this new country we have never visited before. Come Join us!
