Madrid: Sleep, Beer, Tapas, Repeat.

After Porto we hopped on a short plane ride to Madrid.  Upon getting off the plane we were pleasantly surprised that we did not have to go through immigration.  I guess between some EU countries this isnt a thing?  Like many big cities the public transit system (subway in this case) connects directly to the airport.  We bought a 4 day public transit pass and a few subway stops later we were in central madrid walking to our AirBNB.  This was the best of the AirBNBs that we had on our trip and was in a great location, only a short distance from the tube station.

Our first day in Madrid was fairly uneventful.  We went to a small restaurant named Casa Macarena near where we were staying on the recomendation of our host and it was quite good.  It was full of locals and packed.  We had a great soup and peas with bacon to start and then shared some fish croquettes and a pork dish.  It also came with a couple glasses of wine.  Everyone in the restaurant having a glass of wine at 2pm?  My kind of place.


From there we went back to the AirBNB to rest.  Here is the thing about traveling for 16 days, especially the way that we do where we try and pack as much experience into it as possible, occassionally you have to have a day where you do basically nothing.  In the span of 16 days we took 8 flights, 2 long distance train trips, 5-6 ubers and probably 30 trips on public transit.  We stayed in 7 different cities.  All of these long trips we have a crash day where we basically do nothing and recharge.  This was our crash day.  After lunch we went back to the apartment and took a nap.  We woke up that evening and decided it was a good time to do nothing and so just stayed home the rest of that day.

The next morning we woke up mostly refreshed and the plan was to do what we do a lot of times on these trips.  Go find where the locals hang out on a Saturday morning/afternoon and find some food, a drink and get a feel for how life is in a city we have never been to.  Trista had done some digging and there is a square that is non-touristy named Plaza de Olavide.  It is a circle of mostly patio restaurants that has a park in the middle with a fountain.

In true Spanish fashion most of the places did not start serving food until 1:30pm so we found a place that was open and ordered a couple beers.  Now there is one thing that is great about ordering beer in Spain.  Almost universally you get a snack with every drink that you order for free.  The first beers came with a dish of olives.  Now we haven't talked about this either but basically olives are a thing with every meal in both Spain and Portugal.  I love olives and Trista hates them so I would estimate I probably ate about 500 olives on this trip.  The second beer we ordered came with some really good sausage.  In total we paid about 10 euros for 4 beers and 2 snacks.

Now I mentioned that Trista and I try to get out of the tourist areas and experience real local experiences as much as we can.  Sure we like doing the tourist thing to an extent, and you will see some of that in this blog.  But what we love most is to feel like we are experiencing something authentic.  How do you know you are there?  When you look around and there are no Americans or tourists.  This was definitely the case at Plaza de Olavide.  It was friends and family out for a coffee or a drink unwinding after a week at work.  Trista and I sat there for a couple hours soaking it all in until we decided it was time to eat.  Now here we ran into a problem.  The place we were sitting at didn't really have food and every place that did was packed at this point.  So we decided to move on to plaza more popular with tourists Puerta del Sol.

Getting out of the subway there was a blast to the face as soon as we were surface side again.  The place was packed, there was designer shopping everywhere and there was some kind of a concert going on in the middle of the square.  We explored a little...

...and eventually found a small tapas restaurant nearby named El Minibar.  Don't let the name fool you, this restaurant had some of the best food we had on the entire trip and had recently won an award for best tapas dish in Madrid.  We had to wait a bit for a table so ordered a beer, which of course came with some snacks to nibble on.  We eventually got our table and ordered a bunch of food to share.  Pork burritos (actually basically street tacos), a boar dish, the melted cheese that won the award and some bluefin tuna.  It was all excellent.

Overall Trista and I really enjoyed the tapas style dining in both Portugal and Spain and wish that was more of a thing in the states.

(Ps Trista here for a second... check out Dan's wonderful view at El Minibar haha!)

We both decided after a big meal that it was time for a nap.  That evening was the Real Madrid/Atletico Madrid soccer game and we had debated going but tickets for nosebleeds were around $150 each and we decided the money would be better spent elsewhere especially considering how reasonably priced most things were.  We ended up at a bar to watch the game.  It was fun seeing how into it everyone was although the soccer game ended 0-0 so it was pretty much the stereotypical soccer game that Americans love to complain about.  After that we wandered around the area near where we were staying.  That neighborhood we stayed in is Malasana and it was defintely our kind of place.  It was very eclectic with tons of restaurants, bars, shops, tattoo parlors, craft beer places, parks, etc.

(Trista was in love with the street art in the Malasana area)

The next day would be our last day in Madrid and so we were determine to do some of the things you have to check off your box.  The original plan was to go to the Prado Art Museum at some point after we went and ate tapas somewhere on Calle Cava Baja.  Like many days on our trips we get off track for one reason or another and this was no exception.  First off the street we went to for lunch had basically every desirable place to eat completely packed with people.  So we decided to move on.

We hadn't been to Plaza Mayor so we decided to head there and check it out.  It was pretty neat but extremely touristy and everything there was much more expensive than elsewhere.  There were LOTS of empty seats at all of the restaurants in there.  Not a good sign.

So we moved on and ducked into a random restaurant which turned out to be amazing!  It was called El Fontan.  We had a meat and cheese board and some seafood paella and everything was good.

The only problem with this plan is after a huge meal neither of us felt like going to the art museum so that got scrapped for a trip back to the apartment for a nap.  That night we went out to a craft beer bar nearby, the Stuyck Co., and had a delicious dinner of mussels and fries.

Malasana has a large park that people hang out in at night drinking beer and the like and so we bought a couple beers at a store and went and sat there for a long time reflecting on our trip our lives and a bunch of other topics.

We had a great time in Madrid... but before we knew it, it was time for bed and to wake up in the morning to head back to England for a short stopover before our long trek home.