Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
The royal palace of Madrid, Spain is located at the city center with a nice park next to it and a vast garden underneath. It is still today the official seat of the royal family of Spain but they actually live in the Palacio de la Zarzuela a little bit outside of the city. The Palacio Real was first used in 1764 by king Charles III. It is a very large palace with 2000 rooms and is double as large as the Buckingham Palace.
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Breakfast at Madrid, Spain seems to be not really healthy. The speciality of the city – but it is also served throughout the whole country – is fried dough that you can dip into melted (bittersweet) chocolate. Chocolate con Churros is beloved by the locals and you should at least try it once. The famous Chocolatería San Ginés serves this kind of food around the clock and is therefore especially an option after a long night.
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It is one of the three major art museums of Madrid, Spain – all located close to each other and maybe the one with the most cumbersome name: the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. It is named after the industrials and art collectors Heinrich Thyssen and his son Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon. Thyssen is a name well known in Germany, the addition Bornemisza comes from a marriage with Hungarian nobility.
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If you’re at the city center of Madrid, Spain you will experience that the city is everything but not flat. You’re almost constantly walking up and down hills. But what is missing is some kind of viewpoint – you have no chance to see how vast the city is. One option is close to the Templo de Debod where you can have a look on the Palacio Real, the Catedral de la Almudena and the western part of the city, but it is only a limited view on the city.
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It is worth to visit the railway station Madrid Puerta de Atocha without wanting to use a train. The dead-end station has a new and an old main hall; the older one is from 1888 and was built in art nouveau style. Under the fantastic roof made of cast iron and glass there is now a large palm garden you can walk through and sit down in. Waiting for a train has never been that nice! When you relax under the trees you might forget that you are currently at the most important inner-city hub.
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What Germans abroad seem to miss most is typical German bread. In Madrid, Spain that is no problem as someone decided to supply the German community with everything it needs and opened a German bakery, a German grocery and a restaurant with German food – the Fass. And they also organize ‘typical’ German beer parties for the Spanish to give them the Oktoberfest feeling.
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The botanical garden of Madrid, Spain is a special one. It consists of three terraces with flower beds that form exact geometrical shapes. The Real Jardín Botánico is rather a landscape garden with numerous flowers and trees inside. It was founded in 1755 outside of the city and then moved in 1781 to its current location next to the Museo del Prado. The garden contains 5000 trees and plants from all over the world.
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If you had enough hustle and bustle in the city of Madrid, Spain than the Parque del Retiro might be your ideal safe haven. And that is what Retiro means: retreat. It is a giant park close to the city center and it was originally a garden for the royal family. After the end of the reign of Isabell II in 1868 it became a park for the people which is still today – on weekends complete families get here to relax. Most iconic is the artificial lake Estanque del Retiro on which you can row a boat.
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If you love art you need to go once in a lifetime to the Museo del Prado at Madrid, Spain. It is a giant temple of art, one of the most important art museums in the world and it was opened in 1819 because Ferdinand VII of Spain wanted to have an art gallery like the Louvre. And like I got lost in the museum at Paris, France I got lost at the Prado. After some hours the art buffer in your brain flows over and you’re still not even close to have seen everything. It’s better to be well prepared and to focus on the most important works.
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The Plaza Mayor is a very special place at Madrid, Spain but quite typical for a Spanish city: a rectangular space with the same four-level buildings on all sides and various gates – formerly used as a market square. In the center there is a statue of Philip III from the House of Habsburg. I enjoyed especially the paintings on one of the buildings, the Casa de la Panadería – but they are pretty young and were painted only in 1992.
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