To be honest I am not sure why I didn’t post about Spain on this blog the minute I got back. It was an amazing trip. But here we are, 3 months later, and not a peep. Well, dear reader, today is your lucky day, because I am here to wax poetic about Madrid. Get ready for a long-winded post.
The neighborhood we stayed in, Lavapies, has the highest concentration of immigrants of any neighborhood in Madrid. It was also super punk. Anarchist, leftist, and progressive students abounded; when we arrived, a DIY zine and craft fair had popped up at the local plaza, Tirso de Molina, and a vegan activist group was engaging with the public on animal rights. Every night, young leftists gave out presumably donated or rescued food to the community; when a formalized event wasn’t happening, folks were drinking, playing music, and chatting through the night at Plaza Tirso de Molina as well as Plaza Nelson Mandela, just a few blocks down the street.
The view from our accommodations
Another cool thing in our neighborhood, as well as the neighboring hood La Latina, was the sticker graffiti. Local artists create characters who they then produce stickers of in varying sizes. These stickers are made of a material that is very difficult to remove, ensuring the longevity of their art. The below character is Bloo, a tiger found all over Lavapies and La Latina.
It took us a day or two to get used to the time change as well as the differences in standard mealtimes and siesta (yes, this is a real thing and it’s glorious) but when you’re on vacation you can sleep whenever you want, so we recovered relatively quickly. Typically, lunch and dinner are both eaten much later in Spain than in the US. We had dinner around 9pm most days, and lucky for me, there were TONS of vegan tapas places. We had tapas veganas almost every night, and honestly I lost track of some of the delicious cafes we ate at, there were so many!
I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the tapas since I was busy devouring them, but on our very first night I took a photo of our very first Spanish sangrias.
In addition to food there’s a LOT of wine and cocktails to be had in Madrid. They aren’t as big on the craft beer I’m more used to in the states but we weren’t upset. The abundance of sangria y vermut more than made up for it. I have never seen vermouth regularly offered up straight in so many varieties on a menu – I just saw it as a cocktail ingredient – but turns out, plain vermouth is delicious! Not so much the standard Martini&Rossi you see at cocktail bars so much in the US, but all different flavor profiles and shades.
Vermouth comes in tiny glasses that look like half a rocks glass, usually with ice.
A few of the more interesting cocktails we tried – I’m not even going to try to remember the names and locations on these:
We took two day trips. The first one, to Segovia, was on the bullet train, which cost 22 euros per person round trip, and brought us to Segovia very quickly at a speed of 130 miles per hour. When we arrived it was rainy and cold, but once it dried up and warmed up, we were able to appreciate the beautiful architecture of the city.
Our other day trip was to Cercedilla, which we took an hour-long bus ride to. It’s a small, rural mountain town with a walking trail around the perimeter. The trail overlooks farms, villages, and a mountain view.
Honestly this is just a small fraction of all the experiences Chris and I had in Spain. There is just so much to see and do in and around Madrid I could not possibly fit it into a blog post without it becoming a novella. Honestly though – it was one of my favorite cities I have ever visited. Like, I keep fantasizing about moving there. And the flight from Logan was only around $360 RT. Go!
Kim's Design Blog 