Our Adventures (3)

Madrid

After about a month of being tour guides for friends and family, (see our previous post if you want to see what we got up to) we decided that we needed a weekend to ourselves to relax and catch up with some friends. What better place to do this than the fashion capital of Spain, which also happens to be a short 50 minute plane ride from Granada? Or so we thought... It's well known that we don't have the best luck with planes, but this was taken to a whole new level. We won't bore you with the details, but we ended up with a nice 7 hour delay - a great start to our relaxing weekend away.

When we finally arrived at the Airbnb and met our friends it was around midnight (and by the time we'd caught up it was almost 3am!) and we were exhausted, so settled down for the night, or morning. 

In the morning, we decided to sample our favourite Spanish breakfast dish -churros and hot chocolate. After looking at the queue for the "best churros in Madrid", we swiftly turned on our heels and searched for a better offer. One interesting difference we noticed between Madrid and Granada is that when we asked for churros, we got the really thin and crispy version, and they referred to the more thick and doughnut-like version as porras. They weren't as good - essentially we've become churros snobs.

Bouncing off the walls with sugar, we decided that the first stop on our mini break in Madrid should definitely be the Royal Palace, which is (according to Wikipedia, an ever-so-reliable source) the largest functioning palace in Europe! Both the outside and inside are stunning and without the dreaded audio tour, we were left to wander around freely and take in the amazing architecture and imagine what it would be like to be royalty.

It's well known that you can't have a girls holiday without a bit of shopping, and Gran Vía is definitely the place to be. Being stereotypical "white girls" we had to check out the Primark, which is the second 'largest in Europe'. If you thought your normal Primark at home was an overwhelming sensory experience, this is on a whole new scale! It is a 5-storey, bright, loud, labyrinth of budget clothes and we were in our element. Other shops we checked out were Sephora, H&M and Brandy Melville, where we all spent too much money and our bank balances hated us. 

After showering and sprucing ourselves up, we headed out for tea, not really knowing where we were going or what we were looking for. We found somewhere on Google which looked promising but ended up being booked up. But, after asking the waiter, he kindly took us to their partner restaurant and got us a table there! The three meat-eaters got juicy looking steaks which were still sizzling as the waitress brought them to the table, and the vegetarian had one of the nicest mushroom risottos ever! Unfortunately we can't remember the name of the restaurant, but if we ever go back to Madrid we will definitely try and find it because the food was amazing quality and the service was fab! 

Sunday was a more relaxed day, mostly spent wandering around this modern city - café hopping and catching up - however we did have a wander around Retiro Park, which was amazing! As we got off the metro, we were greeted with human statues, musicians, magicians and childrens entertainers. A personal highlight was seeing Hedwig's Theme played on the rims of glasses filled with water. After managing to not give up any of our money, we had a wander around the park and the lake, and up to a glass building which had two enormous sculptures of people shushing at each other. It was very artistic, but I wasn't able to get any good photos. We did get these selfies though; the lighting was amazing!

We then slowly said goodbye to our friends as they left one by one, and made our way to the airport, for a much smoother flight back to our beloved Granada.

Annie & Rebeka