Spain: Checkin' In and Checkin' Out Madrid!

Because so many people have been asking to see pictures of our trip to Spain, I have decided to interrupt my blog posts about our All-American road trip with the family to blog about the trip that Dennis and I were able to go on without the kids the last week in September.  My intention was to get the whole RV trip up on the blog before we left for Spain, but there was the start of school, and seminary, and getting ready to leave again, and well, life thing that kept getting in the way.  Now my goal is to get the Spain trip up on the blog and the rest of the RV trip before the holidays because I have forced myself to put a moratorium on picture taking until I get that done... 

and I would really like to take a few pics of the holidays.  

So anyway, here we go...

Dennis and I went to Spain.  The thing that you need to understand was that we did not choose it, we did not plan it, and we did not pay for it!!!  And that is precisely why it was a trip of a lifetime!

Let me explain.  Dennis is an insurance agent and owns his own agency (so if you need insurance, call him!  There, that was my plug) where he sells products from several companies.  One company he sells for is Commerce West.  Now Dennis has earned incentive trips through Commerce West before through his sales, good loss ratio, yadda, yadda, yadda (I am not sure exactly what the qualifications are, but the trips are awarded as incentive to the top agencies).  We have gone to Kauai and more recently on a Mexican Riviera cruise with this company.  Both were just great trips, but this trip to Spain was in a whole other ballpark.  You see, Commerce West, and its sister companies, Commerce and Commerce Central, were recently bought by Mapfre, a big time Spanish company.  The folks at Mapfre wanted to show their newly acquired American subsidiaries a bit of who they are and what their company is all about so they invited about a hundred of the top agents and their guests to come get a taste of the best of Spain.  Dennis doesn't always earn the trip, so of all years, we lucked out that this was his year! 

We heard that Mapfre spent $10K per person for this trip!!!  That's $10,000 EACH! I found that hard to believe until I experienced it for myself and I could easily see how it all added up.  They literally wined and dined us all week long, we had a team of knowledgeable tour guides with us at all times, a fleet of charter buses, and they paid for everything!  They wanted to show us the best of Spain, and they sure did!

This is the Madrid airport.  It is so cool architecturally - very airy and open and colorful!  We were SO happy to get here!

This is were we stayed - The Westin Palace Hotel Madrid, built in 1912!  It was a beautiful, beautiful old hotel right in the center of everything.  It was so very much my favorite style!

This is the front of the hotel.

Here is Dennis at the front door of the hotel.  It is a old European city with narrow streets and space is a premium, so they pull the cars right up onto the sidewalk to let the guests out.

I love the ladies adorning the top of the building and the monogram PH everywhere.

This pic on the left is one of my favorite shots of the beautiful buildings across the street.  The architecture in Madrid is breathtakingly beautiful and reminded me so much of Paris, which really surprised me.

You know you are staying in a fancy hotel when everything from the windows to the ceiling to the drinking glasses, has the monogram on it!

The lobby was fabulous with the most beautiful and unique chandelier!

The walls and ceiling of the lobby was all painted beautifully in trompe l'oeil.  That curtain on the door, and the niche above it is all painted on.

The was beautiful stained glass everywhere!  The round medallion above was on the ceiling, and the monogrammed windows like these were in the stairwell at the landing for each floor.

But the jewel of the hotel is the Rotunda, above, and here is why...

The absolutely amazing stained glass roof of the round main restaurant was simply incredible!

A giant chandelier hung in the middle.  It was so bright and full of light in that room!

We were lucky enough to have breakfast in there every morning (and what a great breakfast it was!  All you can eat with every kind of fresh fruit and cheeses and yogurts you can think of, fresh croissants and churros, smoked salmon and Spanish ham, and omelets to order, not to mention your typical array of eggs, bacon and pancakes.  My favorite was the hot chocolate!  How is it that we just don't have hot chocolate here in the US like you find in Europe?)

On every floor there was always a bowl of crisp green apples, and I took advantage of those plenty (especially since dinner is never eaten in Spain until about 9pm - there is always a LONG span between lunch and dinner and those apples came in handy.)

Finally, our room!  It had been a long trip (LAX to NYC to Madrid) and we were exhausted!

Our room was a bit small, but that is to be expected in Europe, and since we didn't have a bunch of kids who needed to sleep on the floor, it was perfect!  It was lovely, and the beds were just heavenly! Westin prides itself on their "heavenly beds" and I can vouch for that name!  I loved the french mirrored closet doors and the yellow and blue decor.

Even the glass door to the toilet was etched with the Hotel's seal, and there was a bidet in there as well (sorry, no pics of Dennis giving that a try.)

And this was the view from our room!  Yep, these are the same pretty buildings across the street form the hotel.  Our room was on the 6th (top) floor right near the front.

It was great to be up top and get a close look and the beautiful mosaic work up there.  The amount of detail on those buildings, even up high where people can't really see and appreciate it, is amazing!

More views from our hotel room.  Unfortunately, the windows only opened about 4 inches, so I could only get bits and pieces of pictures without hanging my expensive camera out the window.

When we arrived they had a ballroom set up for our check-in and they had live music playing and served wine or bottled water, hors d'oeuvres, and cookies, or galettas, to refresh us after our long trip.  It was a nice start to what was proving to be a great trip.

Those two dormer windows above were our room.  Dennis was in there, trying out the heavenly beds with a good nap while I came down stairs to take this picture.

When he was good and rested we headed out to explore the city on a free walking tour the company offered throughout the day just to get us a bit more familiar with the city and our surroundings near the hotel.

Our first look at Madrid was impressive!  I had a great time taking some great shots!

We saw a lot of this in Spain, as expected: beautiful, handpainted fans, the tall ornate hair combs, and lovely lace and embroidered shawls.  Some of them were just exquisite!

The La Violeta shop has been there for a few hundred years, where they have made the same candies out of violets from the beginning.  We tasted them, and they have a unique, interesting flavor that I really liked.  I am a fan of edible flowers.

The biggest and most populated square of the whole city, the Puerte del Sol is just a few blocks from our hotel.  That place is crazy busy, and a favorite spot for people watching.  It was a Monday afternoon, and just filled with people.  It is considered the center of not only Madrid, but all of Spain, and the distances in Spain are all measured from that spot (lower right) marked on the ground.

There are government buildings on this square, and all of the great shopping starts on the streets that radiate from this square (which is more like a semi-circle than a square.)  We will be seeing more of the Puerte del Sol.

One thing that I love about Madrid, are the street signs that are on the walls on all of the intersection, kind of like how they do in Paris and other cities.  But in Madrid, all of the signs are done in painted tiles with pictures representing the street on them so that back when people were illiterate, they could still know what street they were on.

Look up!  The buildings were just wonderful! Not really what I had thought of as "Spanish architecture."  In fact, I didn't see much of anything that looked like what we consider Spanish Architecture here in the states.  I like their version better.

Above left:  This was above the entrance to a clock repair shop.  Love it!  Below it is a plaque on the ground in front of businesses that have been operating for at least 100 years.  Right: A man plays music on the rims of champagne glasses.

Walking through some arches brought us into the other main square of Madrid, the Plaza Mayor!  This one really is a square, completely enclosed except for the arches for pedestrian traffic.  It is lined with cafe tables and is even a crazier place for people watching.  The windows above the square are all apartments and flats with some of the highest rent in the city.  I don't know why anyone would want to live here, though.  We visited this square at all hours of the day and night, and it was ALWAYS very noisy!

In the old days, they used to have bull fights here in this square.  I bet the balconies were crowded then!

I loved the lamp posts, and the tile and stucco decorations on the buildings.

There are a lot of squares, or plazas in Madrid.  Napoleon appointed his brother Joseph Bonaparte to rule Spain, and while he sat on the throne he had a lot of existing buildings knocked down to make more squares throughout the city, and so he came to be known as "Bonaparte the Square."  It was a good move, because all the squares break up the maze of streets and really help you to find your way around.

This square is known for its night life, and is located in the literary quarter of town where the great writers lived.

Of course, the most famous Spanish writer was Miguel de Cervantes, who's classic comedy, Don Quixote of La Mancha, is the pride of Madrid.  Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare and, I heard, they both died on the same day.  This was his home on a pretty little street near our hotel.

I just love the beautiful ironwork everywhere!

This is also the oldest part of town, and the oldest home is the one on the bottom right.  I know it doesn't look that old.  That is because in the '80s someone thought it would be a good idea to put a new brick facade on it.  What a shame.

A bar and a monastery inhabit the same corner.  Typical Madrid.

Later, after our walking tour, we went with some friends of ours that we met, Ann and Fausto, to go explore in another direction.  We happened upon this, above, the world's largest vertical garden!  It was just plants growing on the side of a huge wall of a building.  It was very, very cool!

We also saw the beautiful city train station and found an Orbea bike store.  My own bike is an Orbea, a Spanish company, and I LOVE my bike, so we had to go inside.  I bought a Bike Spain jersey!  Perfect (though I never actually got to bike in Spain like I had hoped.  The schedule just didn't accommodate it.)

OK, so no introduction to Madrid or Spain would be complete without telling you about the ham, or jamon.  Jamon is a dried ham, much like prosciutto, only drier, and it is everywhere in Spain.  The most expensive is the Jamon Iberico.  It is from special pigs that are fed entirely on acorns their whole lives giving the fat of the ham a distinct nutty flavor.  When I say expensive I mean it - about 70 euros per kilo.  You do the math.  Needless to say, when we were offered jamon, (and we were offered quite a lot of it) we ate it and enjoyed every bite!  The hams are hanging everywhere out in the open like that in Spain, hoof still attached.  How we wanted to bring one of these babies home, just because the boys would have thought that that hoof was the coolest thing ever!

This is the Reina Sofia, one of the world's premiere modern art museums.  It used to be a hospital.  It is best known for housing one of the greatest collections of the works of Pablo Picasso.  I wanted to go there, but it was not part of the tour and Dennis wouldn't go for it.

Walking back to the store we passed by this pastry shop.  It was beautiful with lovely moldings and fancy marble floors which you didn't really see at first because your attention was diverted by the giant rotating shelves in the window that tempted you with every delightful confection you can imagine!  We just stood there and drooled as the sugary sticky chocolaty goodies floated past us, around and around.

We didn't try anything that first day.  I think we were just too overwhelmed to make a choice.

As the sun began to set, we had to get back to the hotel to get ready for the opening reception that first evening.   We took our time to get ready and arrived a half hour late because we were under the impression that it was just a cocktail mixer type thing.  But we got there just in time to be seated at tables for quite a fancy dinner where we were introduced to some important people form the company, heard a short welcome speech, and then ate our hearts out!  It was fabulous, and we got to meet some of the folks we would be spending the week with.  I took no pictures, though.  Too busy eating, I guess.

After dinner we decided to walk around some more and see if Madrid really is all about the night life like we had heard.  It is!  Colorful cervesas and tapas bars are everywhere.

Madrid is beautiful at night!

Back at the hotel.  It is even prettier lit up!

So that was day one.  We checked in and checked out Madrid.  We were impressed with what we saw so far, and were excited that we still had a whole week to go!