Spain days 4 to 6 - Madrid and San Lorenzo De El Excorial

I smiled at some of you expressing concern over my blogging on honeymoon. Rest assured that we are having a wonderful, relaxing, honeymoon-ish time and my computer is only coming out at rationed intervals :-) I have found blogging to help hugely with organising my thoughts and helping my memory, and I am keen to have these posts to look back on for myself too.

My internet presence is likely to wax and wane over the month (and my commenting to be reduced), but free wifi and some quiet hours this week have allowed me to get online a few times.

Madrid's Royal Palace - front exterior

We have managed to alternate days in Madrid this week with day-trips out of the city. Highlights from the past few days include a visit to Madrid's Royal Palace (Palacio Real De Madrid), which is a spectacular building. It is also the official residence of the Spanish royal family in Madrid, despite it not actually being used by them to live in. The palace has 2,800 rooms, of which 50 are open to the public (no photos sadly), and they are incredibly ornate. I have decided that Spain knows how to decorate grandly - the wall coverings, painted ceilings and general atmosphere was most definitely regal.

Royal Palace - back and surrounding gardens (I was playing with my camera's sweep panorama setting)

We visited the palace on Wednesday, a day that also incorporated a cable car ride, a visit to the somewhat hot Casa de Campo park, and a visit to a chocolate and biscuit shop around the corner from where we are staying (a dangerous position). I purchased quite incredible flavoured chocolate almonds, which were challenging to photograph but delicious to eat.

These insisted on reflecting light and I was to impatient to eat them to take sufficient time to care!

Wednesday evening saw us venture to my second choice of the nearby vegetarian restaurants - my first choice being unhelpfully closed from Sunday through Wednesday evenings. Yerbabuena is very close to where we are staying, on Calle de Bordadores, and refers to itself as providing vegetarian haute cuisine. As we will see, this was not a good match for Mr Bite (!), but the restaurant lived up to its reputation.

The in-store Yerbabuena menu has English translations alongside the Spanish. About half of the dishes are vegan and most of the remaining meals can be made vegan on request. It was, to say the least, a joyous experience to have a whole string of possible dinner options to choose from.

I ordered a vegan dish described in the English translation as tofu fillets with mixed vegetables. The dish was far grander than that description would suggest, with 4 palm-sized tofu fillets interspersed with roast pepper and topped with some avocado sauce. I wasn't enamoured with the sauce, but it was easy to take off and I loved the rest. The tofu was as tender as any I have eaten, without being too soft, and the balance with peppers and some spinach was perfect.

Vegan tofu fillet stack with roast vegetables

The plate also included gazpacho (cold tomato soup), some additional baby peppers, tender potato slices, and some Asian-style sauce. It was a generous dish for the equivalent of about 10 Australian dollars.

Mr Bite ordered crepes with cheese filling, which came with sides of gazpacho, guacamole, salad and the same potato slices. He liked the crepes initially but then found the cheese to be (i) too much and (ii) soft cheese rather than the stronger cheddar he prefers. He also didn't like the sides, which I suspect were there to balance out the cheese.

Vegetarian rolled crepes with cheese and various sides

Mr Bite's drink for the evening, a papaya, mango and pineapple juice, also proved too papaya-y and in all I would say the evening's meal was as much a failure for him as it was a success for me. I have concluded that my husband, bless him, is not one for fancy vegetarian food. Thursday night we had pizza, which was a safer choice!

San Lorenzo de el Escorial

Thursday itself was a day-trip to San Lorenzo de el Escorial, a monastery and World Heritage Site about an hour out of Madrid. The monastery has been largely converted to a museum relating to Spanish royalty, which to us seemed a shame (we would have been keen to hear about the monastery itself), but the buildings are magnificent and the extensive tombs underneath the monastery were very impressive, albeit a tad creepy when considering the past monarchs housed inside (truly).

We also visited Madrid's botanical gardens on Thursday evening, which proved a delightful way to pass an hour and had the bonus of providing fun photo opportunities.

Botanical gardens

Friday, today, was in some ways our last 'proper' day in Madrid. We visited two private museums, the Museo de Cerralbo and Museo del Romaticismo, both of which were well worth seeing. The Cerralbo is the former home of Marquis Cerralbo and houses his impressive and extensive collections of paintings, ornaments and decorative objects. It cost less than four Australian dollars each, photos were allowed, and we were free to wander at leisure - without so much to see that the visit was overwhelming. In all, a perfect museum experience.

Images from the magnificent Museo de Cerralbo

The Museo del Romaticismo was more like a home, set up in the context of the mid-1800s, and was thus enjoyable but less dramatic. We weren't sure if cameras were allowed and were too timid to try and ask in Spanish (especially after I got told off, albeit kindly, for drinking water inside!), so we have no photos from there.

This afternoon also saw me squeeze in some solo shopping, which was cultural in a different sort of way, but I will save details of that for another time - it started with a vague idea of buying a summer dress but morphed to predominantly food purchases (!).

Tomorrow, we plan to visit the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, an art gallery to complement the Prado, and spend some relaxing hours in the large Parque del Buen Retiro, which has 140 hectares of gardens. We then take an overnight train to Lisbon in Portugal, and in Portugal we will remain until the following week.

Are you in to museums when travelling? When I'm by myself I tend to skip over most in favour of wandering and gardens and shops, but I do like them with company and in moderation.

Tweet

Pin It