Category: Madrid

Holidays / Madrid / Museums

Madrid Winter mashup

As we get cosy during our second Madrid winter, we wanted to look back at some of the museums, visitors, and food experiences we saw during our first year in the big city. The Royal Palace you see in the picture above was lit up for Spanish National Day, which is how they celebrate Columbus Day here. Some high-tech projection technology was involved to get the colors right on the actual architecture. The Plaza Mayor also had a strange suspended art installation. Though night began to fall earlier, the sunsets out our 5th-floor window seemed to become even prettier. We

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Madrid / Museums

Madrid Museums: Gaviria (Escher, Mucha, & surrealists)

Madrid has a wealth of museums, and one of our favorites is in our own backyard, so to speak. We’ve seen three exhibits featuring very different iconic artists at this museum since we moved to the city. The Palacio de Gaviria, located mere minutes from our front door, is a 19th-Century palace that features rotating exhibitions. Last August, the M.C. Escher exhibit caught Doer’s eye, while somehow Dreamer was not quite as familiar with his work. She quickly fell in love. Hi, Bauble Doer! The Dutch artist is famous for mind-bending works like impossible geometric designs and things like pictures

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Madrid

Tchoo-Tchoo: Ghost metro station & Madrid train history

Madrid has countless great museums, but a certain subset really appeal to Doer’s engineer brain. This city, like much of urban Spain, has a great public transit system based largely on different kinds of trains. There is actually a long history to the railroad here, and we set out to explore it a bit. Our first stop: the Museo del Ferrocarril, near modern-day Atocha station in the disused Delicias station, dedicated to the history of Spanish rail. All Spanish railways and this museum are overseen by RENFE, the Spanish national rail operator. The museum is a living history of nearly

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Madrid

Autumn in Madrid, Part 2

Before we moved to Madrid, we heard that we could expect 9 months of winter followed by 3 months of hell, and we have found that to be more or less true. Therefore, we tried to explore in and around our new city as much as possible last autumn, when the weather reached that ephemeral period that is neither too hot nor too cold. October 12 was Hispanic Day, or what we know in America as Columbus Day. It celebrates pretty much the same thing here: the discovery of America, plus the greatness of the Spanish empire. Several perfectly-calibrated projectors were

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Madrid

Sheep in the streets!

We are no strangers to parades. When we lived in the Valencian Community last year, there seemed to be one every weekend. But we hadn’t seen any locals take to the streets in the first months after our move to Madrid last summer. In October, however, that changed – in a big way. Despite our repeated exposure to traditional dress, musicians, fireworks, and the occasional horse in Valencian parades, we were in no way prepared to see thousands of animals making their way through a major world capital. The Fiesta de la Transhumancia, or Transhumance Festival, is a nod to

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Madrid

Autumn in Madrid, Part 1

Last October, after saying goodbye to Dreamer’s brother and his wife, we decided to take advantage of the lovely fall weather and appreciatethe beauty of Madrid from above. Madrid’s Cable Car, el Teleférico, begins its ascent a mere 15 minutes from our apartment, in the Parque del Oeste. After boarding, Dreamer did a quick mental safety check: is there anything we should be worried about on this kind of ride? With her mind at ease (or at least realizing we were powerless at this point to get off), we were free to enjoy the views. The ride gave us a

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