If you happen to visit Spain, the capital city of Madrid is definitely worth a visit. It has a completely different vibe than Barcelona. We spent only 2 days here but it was packed with so many activities. The city feels very calm but there are a number of things to do. We started by visiting the Royal Palace of Madrid. Some may be aware that Spain does have a monarchy, not as well known as the British Royal family, but the palace is definitely worth a visit. We were not allowed to take pictures inside most of the rooms but they are nothing less of magnificent! The tour does not take more than 2-3 hours and it’s advisable to go early to avoid crowds and to book tours online so that you can skip the lines.
Our next stop after the Palace was the Mercardo de San Miguel. It’s a fancy market that showcases a variety of food and drinks. The prices are very reasonable so you can try a little bit of everything and that is exactly what we did! They have everything from Sangrias to Empanadas and Calamari. The summer months in Madird are extremely hot and the temperature range from 29 Celsius to 38 Celsius ( 82 to 104 Fahrenheit). So during the afternoon we would come back to our hotel rooms for a nap since it was way too hot for us to roam around and keep our energy up. We napped for a few hours and went out shopping on Gran Via. Gran Via is the famous street that houses all the popular shops, it has restaurants and business buildings as well.
Everything is quite walk able from downtown Madrid so we didn’t take any transit. We walked everywhere, although some of the places can be a bit of walk (maybe 3.2 kilometers or 2 miles). The next day we visited Retiro Park. This park is so beautiful! It’s quite a big park that has various walking areas, a small pond where you can boat, and even a rose garden.
In the park, there was a Crystal Palace. It’s essentially a glass palace which housed a few statues. It’s really beautiful but due to the heat we couldn’t stay inside for very long. As mentioned, there is so much to do within the Park; definitely a must visit if in Madrid.
After we spend most of the day in the Park we went to see the Temple of Debod. It was donated to Spain by the Egyptians and houses artifacts and the temple. The temple is suppose to be surrounded by water but due to the extreme summer temperatures it wasn’t surrounded by water during our visit. The temple is free of charge to visit and is close to the Palace of Madrid.
A few restaurant recommendations in Madrid include Rosi La Loca, (they have this really amazing Burrata and the inject pesto into it…sounds weird but so delicious!), the Mercado de San Miguel (variety of food options), Korgui (pictured above, the food is a little expensive but is very good; it has modern take on Spanish food), and Malaspina (casual tapas place with drink options). There is no shortage of restaurants in Madrid but keep in mind they eat dinner quite late in comparison to North Americans. We would make our reservations after 9pm and 10pm is peak time.