So far on this trip, I have been a very frustrated photographer. It’s not that I haven’t been able to take any photos. On the contrary, I have taken more than 1,000. But what is frustrating is that I have been unable to do my early morning photo walks and get pictures when the light is at its best. Regular readers know I love to shoot during the “blue hour” and the “golden hour.” Well, those barely exist in Madrid or in all of Spain because of a little-known time anomaly. It seems that sometime in the past, the Spaniards were trying to make peace with the British and one of the things they did to show how much they loved all things British was put themselves in the same time zone as Great Britain when actually they should be about a time zone and a half further east. So, if you fly straight north from here, you would be in Warsaw, Poland, but the time here correlates to London. This means that sunrise today was around 8:30 am. That’s too late for me to be out shooting photos when we have to be heading our on tours at 9:00. Yesterday, I was about a mile away and thought it was still around 6:30, and it turned out to be 7:50, and I was supposed to meet the rest of the group for breakfast at 8:00. YIKES…so I walked really fast and barely made it back—only a little late. Let me toss in the early morning shots I did get right here. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
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- The Four Seasons Hotel. According to their sign, one of the top 50 hotels in the world.
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- Another building with horses on top.
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- And a street scene
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- And another street scene
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- And another.
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- And another.
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- The place for the best hot chocolate and churros in Madrid
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- A clothing store for the Wicked fans.
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- The bear and the strawberry tree. Our meeting place for our tour later on.
After we finished the breakfast that I was late for; it was time to leave the hotel for a one-of-a-kind Madrid experience—churros and chocolate. We had heard (YouTube videos) that there were two places famous for their churros and the hot chocolate you dip them into. The oldest and most famous is Chocolatería San Ginés. I found it on my early morning walk, so I led the gang down to try out the churros dipped in what is pretty much melted chocolate. It was awesome. But on the way down, Kathleen’s knee and neuropathy started giving her problems, so she and I walked back up to the hotel (the nearest Uber or Bolt was 20 minutes away) while the rest of the group walked ahead to find our guide for the day.
Speaking of walking, I did a lot of walking yesterday. My Map My Walk/Run app shows that I walked more than ten miles. Some of my walking was for exercise and photography reasons, but we had also booked a walking tour of Madrid through a company called The Tour Guy.
The Tour Guy company is a tour broker who books tours with different companies worldwide to do tours in a particular place…in this case, Madrid. Mike had used them before in other locations. Those who have read my posts in the past, you know that I am a massive fan of Tours by Locals, but since Mike had booked with them before, we went with them. I made the booking because if you are booking with The Tour Guy for the first time, you get a discount.
Our tour was assigned to a company called Touring Pandas. Even though we got a local guide, I did some checking this morning and the tour company we were brokered out to is based in Korea. That in itself is interesting.
I say all this to preface that we had a good tour guide. Her name was Taylor, and she is from Newcastle, England. She spoke with a beautiful British accent and has lived in Madrid for four years. She knew all about the city and shared great tips with us for food and drink after the tour.
The two anchor spots of this tour (places you really want to see and learn more about) are the Royal Palace and the Prado Art Museum. So we started by walking around, catching fun and exciting parts of Madrid between our meeting spot in the Puerta Del Sol and our big morning stop, the Palace. Everything was great right up until that point.
Then, the big surprise. Taylor told us that after we got in (with our pre-paid tickets—buy yours before you go because otherwise, the wait is very long), we could rent audio guides that would take us through the entire Palace. Mike said, “Well, we won’t need those since you will give us a live tour.” Taylor said, “No, I don’t come in with you. I’ll leave you here to tour the Palace and then have lunch on your own. I will meet you in a park on the other side of Madrid at 3:00 pm. We will tour the park, and then I will take you to the Prado, where you have pre-reserved tickets, and you will tour The Prado on your own as well.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. I know Mike was surprised as well. We had paid for an eight-hour tour (it says that on our reservation), but this meant we were getting about a three-hour tour.
That’s different from what we were looking for. We wanted what we had the day before with Fernando in Toledo: a guide who was with us from the time we got out of our van until we finished at the end of the day, who took us into museums and cathedrals and didn’t just drop us off outside of them.
But when Taylor arrived on time, she told us a lot about the Plaza del Sol, where the tour started, and the Bear and Strawberry Tree statue where we met. Then we left the plaza and headed towards Plaza Mayor, The Mercado, the Basilica, and finally winding up at the Palace, where we had tickets to the tour that I mentioned above. At this point, I was feeling bad about Kathleen being stuck in the hotel all by herself, and I knew she wouldn’t want to go out to lunch alone, so I decided to buzz through the Palace fairly quickly and head back to the hotel to take her out to lunch somewhere near the hotel while the rest of the group took a leisurely stroll through on their tour. Here are my photos from the morning part of the tour and my zoom through the Palace (the photo at the top of this page is the Spanish throne room). Enjoy, and you know the drill.
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- A very happy cow on a door next to our hotel.
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- The Tio Pepe sign, a Madrid icon.
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- And a statue in the square. Or should I say that every plaza has a statue?
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- There were signs like this on many buildings, indicating that a famous person had lived there once.
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- Loved this hotel, one of Madrid’s oldest.
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- Taylor, our guide.
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- Street signs in Madrid have related art. This is Elbow Street.
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- Not sure what kind of business this store does but all they sell is statues of people doing this in various sizes.
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- Restaurants with a plaque on the sidewalk outside of them have been there for 100 years or more.
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- A dog outside the Palace.
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- A great view of the Basilica.
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- And lion with attitude that I liked.
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- Inside the Palace, a statue of the inbred king. Too many married cousins in his lineage.
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- The massive staircase in the Palace.
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- The grand dining room
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- Palace Art.
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- Palace Room.
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- Another interesting Palace Room.
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- The Royal Family portrait a few years ago. The older man was the king. He has now abdicated to his son, the tall man on the right.
I should say that it was INCREDIBLY difficult to buzz through the Palace because it has a lot of choke points where the thousands of Asian tour groups just seemed to stop to listen to their guide in their earpieces…but at least they had a guide.
After I finally got out of there, I was off to the hotel and surprised Kathleen by taking her to an Italian place just down the block from the hotel so she didn’t have to walk very far. We had a nice lunch, and then after I got her back to the hotel, I walked off to meet up with Taylor and the rest of the gang at El Retiro Park, which is Madrid’s answer to New York’s Central Park. It is truly a beautiful place, as I hope you will see in my photos. By the way, the weather yesterday was hit or miss. It started out OK, switched to cloudy and cool, the sun finally came out, and within 20 minutes, it was threatening rain again. Go figure.
When I got to El Retiro Park, Taylor walked us around, saying she would take us to the Prado and drop us off there. To be honest, at that point I had been up since 1:30 am, I had walked more than nine miles and I am not that big a fan of Spanish art. So I bid my farewells and walked my way back to the hotel. The other four of our group had a very nice time seeing the Prado and made it back in time for all of us to go out for tapas at another place down the street. They have excellent food and what has become a favorite drink, vermouth on the rocks with lemon. We are sitting on our bed at the hotel (after our day—today—in Segovia—more about that tomorrow), drinking two of them. Let’s finish up our day in Madrid with my afternoon photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
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- Saw this group of street musicians on the way back to meet the group in El Retiro Park.
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- And this lion.
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- And these cherubs.
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- They each represent a different virtue of childhood.
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- Darned if I can remember which virtue.
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- But they are kind of cool.
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- Taylor told us this is the “Galapagos Fountain” because the famous Galapagos turtles are in it. Except it’s Galapagos tortoises.
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- A beautiful, man-made created by a king to hold mock naval battles.
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- A lion protecting the lake.
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- Another view.
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- This musician plays music by rubbing glasses. He was playing the theme from Harry Potter.
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- But he sneaked a look at me when I tipped him. Always tip your models.
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- The artichoke fountain.
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- Another great Spanish statue with attitude.
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- I used to have friends who owned a store called The Black Swan. I thought it was a myth.
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- Madrid’s version of the Arc de Triumph.
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- And the statues around it.
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- And lastly…the Metropolis Hotel.
That about did it for our day in Madrid. Today (I am writing this at about 8:00 pm on Tuesday), we were in Segovia, and it was AWESOME! We fly to Lisbon tomorrow to start our Viking portion of the trip tomorrow. More about all of that soon.
I never heard anyone say anything bad about Madrid. —Antonio Ruddier
I’m exhausted just reading what you have done. Once again the photos are superb, the light must be pretty good as you are really capturing lots of colour. ?
Shame about the guide, will you be complaining? I bet there is something in the small print…….
Remember, it was not the guide. Taylor was great. It was the guide company who charged us for an eight-hour tour and delivered three hours.
Ok, what is the story behind the bear and the strawberry tree? Enquiring minds would love to know….. yes, I guess one could ‘google’ it but how do I know that the information that I read is accurate?
Taylor told us (I hope I remember this correctly) that the bear represents the government and tree the church. Something about them working together and the church being above the government but trying to ascend to heaven? If that doesn’t sound right, pretend it is ?.
Jim, I just adore reading your posts and perusing your beautiful photos. But you had me at the word ‘neuropathy’. My hubby and I have dreams of many European vacations but we are afraid the walking will get the best of me. How does Kathleen cope?
Our last cruise to Alaska, he left me on-board and went on the hiking excursion with our friends. I couldn’t walk that day. He came back visibly shaken because he had left me behind. He swore he would never leave me again.
Our circle of friends and family want to go, go, go…and my hubby is worried about me. I feel bad for him. I’m only 64, he is almost 72.
Anyway we live vicariously through your explorations and photography. Keep it coming!
Donna,
It took me a while to be able to do what your husband did, but Kathleen has been really good at soothing my guilt. I do get freaked out when she stays behind, and I text her. She doesn’t answer because she is taking a nap…but she has decided that some days she will remain behind at the hotel or on a ship, and for others (like yesterday in Segovia), she will join us but stay on one level and not climb stairs. Yesterday, she found a nice bench where she can sit and read or surf the web (thank goodness we have T-Mobile, so we have coverage everywhere.
We also now give some weight in planning vacations. For instance, it took me a while to find a safari that she could join me on, but we finally did. It involves seeing animals from a riverboat instead of a very bouncy jeep on very bouncy roads. We have switched to river cruising instead of ocean, where much of the scenery can be seen from the boat.
We really started doing this in 2021 when we went to the Galapagos Islands, where they offer two excursions every day…one for very active people like me and one for less active people like her. We split up and went off on our own. We had a great time because, at dinner, we spent the entire time talking about what we had done on our own. The same is true here. I love that she is seeing things through my photography, and I can tell her all about it.
Jim
Hey Jim! Really enjoyed reading your thoughts on Madrid and seeing your great photos, and glad to hear you guys had a fantastic time in Segovia!
Sincere apologies that the tour didn’t align with the expectations you had- I definitely agree that the touring company I was working for this day should do a better job of communicating this. I’ve passed this feedback on to my manager. I will also make the structure of the day as clear as possible in my introductions on future tours.
Best wishes for your onward travels! Ciao!