Madrid – Spain | Script Day 1

Starting today our posts reporting our trip to Spain and already explaining that I will divide in many days to be able to explain well the sights and photos, ah, the photos, somany of them. Madrid was a beautiful city to visit and day 1 was full of interesting places.

The first post of the series was how to travel around Spain with children – you can read here.

Spanish flag in Plaza de Colón

We landed at Madrid airport around 8 am local time, but it would be 3:00 p.m. We arrived tired, the girls already awake, with all day ahead. We couldn’t get there and just relax on the first day, we already had several things pre-programmed so as not to “miss” the day.
Usually our scripts are very flexible because, with children, not everything is predictable and the pace is quite different. We had several points on the map and in the morning we decided what area we would visit that day.
Overall, we find Madrid a clean, organized city and we feel safe in it, even walking all day between public transport, streets and the sights. And speaking of public transport, it is not complicated to use metro, trains etc in Madrid, just have to be prepared to face stairs at several of the stations and pass enough heat (without much ventilation in underground stations). We even heard a news that Madrid wants to ban cars from the city center until 2020 to avoid pollution and encourage the use of public transport, legal right?!
The very friendly people loved to praise the children and send smiles. We had no problems with our Spanish, which surprisingly worked well in most places (and if Spanish caught on, many people speak at least one basic English, in commerce, restaurants, hotels etc).
We were lucky to catch only beautiful and sunny days, and of course, very hot, since this time of year has the highest temperatures of the year there There were days that just could not stay long walking, because it did not have a breeze to relieve (or will be that we become Canadians unaccustomed to the heat – is the doubt! hehehe).

We chose the Petit Palace Presidente Castellana hotel (formerly high tech hotel) because it was accessible to metro stations and the train station (Atocha), as we would go to

Barcelona after that. It was also convenient that there was a supermarket just around the corner with a super cool playground for Alice to play with and some restaurants and cafes nearby (including a Starbucks!).
We liked that they lent a stroller for Alice to use and they also lent biclicletas to guests who would like to know the city under two wheels. The room was organized and had room for everyone.

In the region of our hotel

Despite the time zone and the sleepy night (not to say, nor sleep), we managed to take a walk and check out some of the attractions of Madrid. The Royal Palace, for example, was seen only on the outside on that first day, as we thought the girls (and we) would be a little tired to explore it from the inside. We ended up doing the tour on the last day, when we returned to Madrid for our return flight.
Above, are the main sights that we saw on this day, but of course, we saw many other things, interacting with the people in the street, walking through not so touristy streets and learning the paths of the city.