After spending a few days in Barcelona we headed to Madrid, taking the train. Our hotel in Madrid was only a block or two from the station, so we were able to just walk to it with no problem. After checking in, we decided to go for a walk and try to find a certain market. Using Google maps is great, but “she” always decides on the shortest route, and this time that did not take us through the “best” parts of the city. A bit sketchy for sure, and once we made it to the market area, of course it had already closed.

We found a place to sit and have a drink, but this first impression of Madrid had us thinking it was not a place we would soon come back to. While we were sitting there we Googled “Best Tapas near me”, and one place that came up was only 50 meters away (for CJ, that’s about 55 yards ;-). So we walked over and decided to go in - and probably would not have, but for our experience in Barcelona with our Tapas crawl.

La Concha was great - just a small bar upstairs, and only a few tables downstairs, but the food was excellent and the Vermut was even better. Our waiter made our drinks with a quick mist of Gin on the glass, followed by the Vermut and then a splash of Campari. Sooo good!

Walking back to the hotel, we took a better (more traveled) route that took us past several nice areas of the city. There is beautiful artwork all through the city, and we even passed the “Museo del Jamon” (Museum of Ham - a chain found throughout the city).

During the next few days we had the chance to see much more of the city, and it is a fabulous city (first impressions must be put aside). Incredible parks, gardens, monuments, museums, and the architecture here is unbelievably beautiful. And like Barcelona, this is a very easy city to get around in, with many walking streets, and an easy bus and metro system. We rode the “Hop On Hop Off” bus to get a better feel for where everything was, and from this we were then able to target a few areas to come back to, to spend more time.

After enjoying our Tapas Crawl in Barcelona, we decided to sign up again for the Crawl in Madrid - and we were very glad we did. We spent most of the day walking through the city, and had seen many beautiful areas. The main “shopping streets” of town were all busy setting up for the Champions League Final that would be played the following week between Liverpool and Tottenham. Pretty exciting and we were pretty glad we would be far away when that event was taking place!

We joined the Tapas Crawl group and our leader Raul, and again experienced 5 very unique places for tapas and drinks. The vote for the best food, I believe, went to the pork belly, whiles votes for the best drink went to whichever drink we happened to be having at the time. We even visited that place “where everybody knows your name” - coldest beer in town! Anyway, it was a lot of fun and we had a chance to meet some great people and make new friends. And Raul was a great host, telling us much about the area Chamberi (?) we were in and all the local places.

Overall, we really enjoyed Madrid and would definitely come back and try to spend maybe a full week (or more) exploring this city.

Check out additional pictures in the photo album for Madrid.

Next, we head down to the coast of Spain in Estepona for a bit of R&R before heading to Morocco.

Cheers!