Since my goal with this blog is still to make you travel with me, there is something I cannot miss: telling you about Madrid, my second city, the place where I’ve been putting down roots for exactly one year and three months.
I’m planning to write a series of mini-reportages about each neighbourhood with photos, advice and things to do, but to begin with, here is the city in a nutshell:
Madrid, capital city of Spain, is a 3.3 million inhabitants metropolis (adding the suburbs, we get to 7 millions).
In the environs we can find the Sierra de Guadarrama, a mountain range which highest peak, the Pico de Peñalara, culminates at 2430m.
The nearest coast is the Gulf of Valence, approximately four hours away from Madrid.
Near the capital we can also visit the cities of Toledo, Segovia, Ávila, Alcalá de Henares and Cuenca, all of which have a particular pleasantness and history.
Madrid, and more precisely the Puerta del Sol in the city centre, is the departure point of the six radial highways that cross Spain right through.
The principal points of interest are: the Royal Palace, the Prado Museum, the Retiro Park, the Puerta del Sol, the Atocha train station, the Plaza Mayor, the market of San Miguel, the Gran Vía and the Plaza de España, among other things.
That’s it for the theorical part.
Apart from this, Madrid, it’s also: a city that never stops moving; people in the streets until late at night; trees everywhere that give a fresh breath to the city; large avenues; modern areas like Nuevos Ministerios or Castellana; old neighbourhoods like Lavapiés and La Latina with their narrow and tangled streets; huge and neat parks like the Retiro and the Madrid Río that goes along the Manzanares river and where it is very pleasant to wander; thousands and thousands of bars, always full and abundant with delicious tapas; areas like Chueca and Malasaña where we find lots of little shops, pubs and restaurants which are all very original and charming.
Madrid is also a city that has become international without losing neither its essence nor its character, where the Spaniard’s open and welcoming spirit intermixes with the different cultures of the tourists and the numerous foreign residents of all nationalities.
Madrid, it is Spain, its way of enjoying life, its delicious cuisine, its sunny weather, its liveliness and its nights that never finish.
I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly why I love this city so much.
The only thing I can say is that before visiting it I had never fancied going there, and now that I know it I don’t want to leave it anymore!
It’s the multitude of things to do, the impression that everything is possible, that one can find anything they want here.
It’s all these small and large streets that cross each other and get mixed.
It’s the diversity and the fact that every neighbourhood has got its own personality.
It’s the contrasts in this city that is at the same time old and modern, rich and modest, restless while keeping a human and pleasant spirit, grey and colourful, touristic without stopping being authentic.
It’s all these little things that make Madrid a wonderful city that stays forever in the memories for all the precious treasures we find here.
December 2013
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