Travel: June 2007 Archives

I'm saving a big Barcelona post for this weekend when I have time to sit down and sift through everything we did while we were there, but here's a fun bit of graffiti we saw while in Grananda.

I would go back to San Sebastian in a heartbeat, if, that is, it weren't raining. Unfortunately for us, the rain followed us from Madrid all the way to the coast of San Sebastian. I was fine with this until my socks got wet. Something about wet socks that is very hard to get over. Still, the city is quite beguiling. Amazing tapas restaurants on every block, fun shopping, a beautiful beach and friendly people fond of drinking (but isn't that all of Spain?). A few of my favorite photos, the first from Bar/Restaurant Senra, a must for any foodie, especially for the hot tapas. The second, a shot of the water from atop the mountain behind the town. The third a shot of a glass ceiling in a local cafe.

So, we've uploaded most of the photos to Flickr. I'll be introducing a city a day--and today's Madrid--but you can peek ahead :)

We spent the first two nights in Madrid, where we stayed at Hotel Victoria 4. Our room was a very nice, top-floor room, which like many top floors hotel rooms was quite roomy but had slanted attic-like ceilings and the "marriage" bed was two twins pushed together. But for all that it was clean, quiet and had a huge bathroom with lots of hot water. It was just a couple of blocks off Plaza del La Puerta Del Sol. Because of the rain, our stay was museum heavy--the Prado for classic Spanish art and Reina Sofia (first photo below) for modern art. We did manage to snag an end-of-the-day tour of the church of San Francisco el Grande, snuck an outside peek at Palacio Royal (second photo below), plus did a ton of walking around old Madrid and Bourbon Madrid. We also caught El Retiro Park during a dry part of the day and did a tapas tour of Calle Cava Baja, stopping at Casa Lucas, Txakoli and a few more nearby.

We spent our last night of the whole trip in Madrid, as well, when we stayed at Roommate Laura, which was fabulous and only missing a hotel bar. That was actually one of  the hidden learnings of the trip. So often I wanted a hotel bar and none of the hotels we stayed at had one.

So many cool photos to share, but we'll start with this one, a photo of what was once the second-largest mosque in the world, according to Wikipedia. Not quite as amazing as the Alhambra, but still pretty cool. BTW, Cordoba is one of those one-horse towns. Once you've seen the mezquita, shopped for souvenirs and wandered along the at-times swampy river, it's time to move on.

No more travel. Back in Brooklyn. Will update soon with pictures.