Madrid

I'm spending the holidays in Spain and as it turns out so are some of my friends from back home. One of them is doing research in Switzerland for the year and when we figured out that we would both be in Europe over Christmas we decided to plan a trip to Madrid.

It'd been 8 years since I'd visited the capital of Spain and I had a great time rediscovering the city (and quite literally at that.) We spent most of our three days wandering, just happening upon interesting sites. Though an unconventional approach to tourism, our method worked quite well for us and we managed to see the Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Parque de Retiro, el Palacio Real, Plaza de Toros, el Mercado de San Miguel and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.

Plaza Mayor El Mercado de San Miguel
El Parque de Retiro
Plaza de Toros
And finally, Christmas in the city...

We left Madrid on Friday and what we thought would be a short trip back to Sevilla turned into a very, very long one. First, neither of us thought about the fact is was Friday and the day before Christmas eve and that as a result bus tickets would be sold out until 5pm. Then since we had to make so many stops along the route, the 6 hour trip took almost 8. But Madrid was fun and we made it back to Sevilla in one piece and in the end that's all that really matters.