Madrid!

My mum turned 70 a couple of days ago, to celebrate we travelled to Madrid. Which turned out to be the perfect way to spend Easter, in my opinion. It was sunny, but not too warm, we got to eat a lot of food and explore the city. Since I was asked on twitter to recommend things to see in Madrid, I thought I would write a blogpost.

We stayed at Vincci Soma in Goya, which was a lovely hotel. ( We were supposed to stay at Vincci Soho in Centro, but, uh, I booked the wrong hotel.)

Restaurants:DSC_0349Taberna la Daniela:

This is a chain, I ate at the Goya location, but their tapas was delicious. I found it in the guidebook, and since it was close to our hotel, we decided to give it a try. We were glad we did! We were a bit early, so it was quiet but the food was tasty.

The Geographic club:DSC_0362

On sunday evening, we discovered that a lot of restaurants were closed. Either because it was Sunday, or because it was Easter. But! We discovered this one which was open, and the food was really tasty. But what made it a treat was the decoration. It was… adventurous.

 

 

 

 

Things to do:

This is just tinypart of what to do. Lonely Planet has a much bigger list.

DSC_0311Jardin de Retiro:

This is a large park in Central Madrid. You can probably spend a couple of days just wandering around Retiro if you want to. We hired a row boat, and rowed around the pond on the friday, Which was really fun!

 

                             Temple of Debod:

This is a Egyptian temple that was saved from the Aswan dam when the Egyptian government gifted it to Spain. My biggest regret is that I didn’t enter it, but the que was too long. But DSC_0339the views from it was stunning so it was worth it. ( And yes, it felt really weird to see it in Spain.)

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Wander around and look at old houses:

Since CentrDSC_0349al  Madrid  has a lot of really pretty houses one really nice thing to do is to simply wander through Old town and just soak up all the houses that
they have. Ignore the more modern houses that pops up. The old houses are much more interesting.

 

Some random Tips
:

One thing we did was that we took a sightseeing bus. My recommendation is that you don’t. It was a nice way to see the city, but it wasn’t worth the money. ( Tickets cost 20 euro/ person.)

Make a list of the museDSC_0346ums you want to see, and book tickets ahead if you can. We went to Prado to buy tickets and when we arrived it looked like this.  Yeah. We booked tickets online on our smart phone instead.

 

 

I will admit that  have several museums that I wish that I had been able to see, even if some of them made me wince ( like the Museum packed w artefacts from South America). But we didn’t have time. We spent most of Sunday on Prado. Which is huge. It is one of those things that should be divided into several days.

Also, buy one of the 10 journeys tickets, it costs 12 euro and is perfect for a weekend.