Favorite Places: Madrid

A few weeks ago, as part of my 2010 European adventure, I left my temporary Parisian home to visit my good friend Anthony in Madrid. Temporary tour guide Anthony took us on a walking tour of the city, and, not expecting to like the city as much as I did, I was pleasantly surprised by how clean, well-manicured, and architecturally beautiful Madrid is. Here are my favorite destinations from the trip.

Mercado San Miguel

Located right next to Plaza Mayor in the center of Madrid, this market is, as I understand, the largest open-air food market in Europe. If you've ever been to Les Halles in France or anywhere comparable, you will understand just how much of a claim to fame that title is -- there were SO many vendors. I experienced a delicious Spanish cuisine overload just from looking at all the food.

There were plenty of dishes that Americans would consider exotic cuisine, including these giant fish. The fact that their pupils were still fully intact made them look a little too animated for me...needless to say, I didn't bring any of these guys back to the hostel to cook up.

But I did try caviar for the first time, in two different forms. Here's the caviar-topped pincho I tried. I also had a caviar-filled Basque-style pincho, of which I unfortunately didn't get a picture before I devoured it in two bites. Both were delicious!

PhotoEspaña Exhibition

Photo by David Jimenéz

We spent our Saturday evening at one of the many galleries around Madrid featuring entries from the 2010 PhotoEspaña photo contest. The location we went to featured collections from Latin America. All of the artists' collections had strong points of view and seemed to take their photography a few steps beyond just taking pretty pictures. I could easily spend hours looking through the portfolios on the PhotoEspaña website.

From Harold Edgerton's collection What You Miss When You Blink

Mercado de la Reina

This was my favorite tapas outing of the trip, which is definitely saying something, considering the amount of tapas I ate in Madrid. My favorite dish was the pincho con jamon: sliced bread topped with ham and goat cheese. I also really liked the decor of Mercado de la Reina; the best part of the bar/restaurant was the full-sized, live tree growing through the middle of the indoor dining room.

The price was another up-side. We paid about 9 Euros per person for five plates of tapas and three rounds of drinks. Madrid is so cheap! It was really refreshing to pay so little for food and drinks after having been in Paris.

Madrid was the last leg of my journey. I'm already nostalgic for the two weeks I spent traveling, but it's good to be home! More posts about Rochester to come!