The BEST of MADRID SPAIN Top Things to Do

The BEST of MADRID SPAIN Top Things to Do

Welcome to Madrid. This is Spain’s magnificent capital and it is the first stop on our Spanish adventure. I’m Lisa with Swifty Travels and for five incredible days, we made this vibrant city our home base. Staying right here in the heart of it all at Hotel Europa in Porttool. In this week’s video, we are focusing on the center of historic Madrid. I’ll take you to what I think are the best sites in this part of the city. We’ll be visiting the worldclass Praau Museum, Crater Park, the Royal Palace and Gallery, and in between the sites, we will enjoy strolling the bustling, character-filled streets of Madrid. Sample mouthwatering Spanish delicacies at Marcato de San Miguel, and we’ll be searching for the best churros in all of Madrid. If you’re interested in visiting Spain, then you’re going to want to subscribe because in the upcoming episodes, we’re going to be visiting the historic towns of Toledo and Siggoia, as well as Barcelona. Good morning. We are here at the Praau Museum on a chilly spring morning here in Madrid, Spain. And this is one of the premier art museums in the world to visit when you’re here. So, tickets are $15 for journal admission. There are discounts for students and a variety of different discounts are available. They do recommend that you get your tickets ahead of time. If you order them ahead of time, you’re going to need to pick a time slot to visit. We decided we didn’t want to really be bound by a schedule and it is um early in the year. It’s not peak season. So, we’re taking our chances and we are standing in line, which is right across uh right wrapped around the building just a little bit to get in. So, I’ll show you what we find here in the Praau Museum. We ended up waiting in line about 30 minutes, but then we were able to get right in. If you stand in line like I did and you’ve got some folks with you, you can take turns and walk around the area a bit. It is quite beautiful. The Praau Museum is considered one of the world’s great art museums. It features masterpieces by many artists really focused in on Italian and Spanish artists. Some of the greats include Diego Velasquez, Francisco Degoya, and Elgreco to name a few. All right. Well, we spent the morning at the Praau Museum. Absolutely amazing. There were no photographs inside, no filming inside. There’s several floors. You could literally be there all day. So, we spent several hours. And I wrote down a few of the paintings that really caught my eye. I’ll share them with you here. And now we’re going to go to a park that is just a few blocks away. We stopped for a delicious lunch and now we’re going to go check out this beautiful park here in Spain. This is an absolutely lovely park. manicured gardens, walkways, paths, birds, beautiful bushes even blooming and trees getting ready to bloom even though it’s still quite cold. I’m not sure if it’s normally this chilly this time of year. It is late March. This is spring break time for us and it has been very brisk and rainy here in Madrid this week. But this is a great place to come and get some exercise. And there’s a big lake in the middle of this park. Now, my husband was born in Madrid, and he lived here till he was nine, and he has fond memories of this lake or pond, whatever you want to call it, here in the middle of the park. So, we’re going to go try to recreate the view from his memories. So, we’ll see that shortly. But, if you make it over to the museum area of Madrid, you’re going to have to check this out. Just for the record, this is not your average park. This park is huge, like Central Park huge. It’s something like 350 acres. This park was originally built in the early 17th century by King Philip IV. It was designed as a private garden for the monarchy. Now it’s free to enjoy for everyone. [Music] Oh, looks like we are going to experience the rowboat. It is freezing out here today as well, but we’re going to give it a try. All right. Thank you. All right. I can’t believe it. We are out on the rowboat. So, it is $6 for to take the boat out for 45 minutes for up to four people on weekdays and it is $8 for a party of four for 45 minutes on weekends and holidays. So, the wait wasn’t too long and it’s uh got to designate someone to row the boat and that is not me today. So, I am enjoying the ride. Let me just say, would you ever be able to have an experience like this in the United States for only $6? I think not. Okay. For €6, not dollars. This lake is actually called the Grand Pond. And this impressive statue here is the monument to King Alfonso the 7th. Queen Maria Christina commissioned the statue in memory of her late husband and it was unveiled in 1922. Now, these guys here are really enjoying a fun game. Check this out. How fun is that? That was so much fun. €6 only for 45 minutes out on the lake for us. What a great time. Right down here, you can go down the steps. Um, this is just to the north of that lake. They are public restrooms, but they are pretty gross and there’s no toilet paper. So, that’s the Swifty Travels restroom report. I have heard that there’s not really good public restrooms here around Madrid, but there’s some rowdy boys. [Music] So, we’ve circled around and now we’re headed back towards the Praau Museum and we’re going to make it back into town for the evening near our room. We are in town already. So here we’re right next to the Prada Museum and you can see all the hop on hop off red sightseeing buses right over there. That is about $25 to $26 a person I believe to take that tour bus. I did look into it but we have not decided to do that just yet. We’ll see what the week brings. We have enough time here that I think we’re going to just do sightseeing on our [Music] own. Super long line. We’re literally just walking [Music] back. So, there’s this crazy line of people. We’re pretty much just walking back to our hotel and this has caught our interest. Something very important seems to be going on [Music] here. So, [Music] wow. What do you think it could be? Huge line. Let’s go up and see what it is. just because we’re curious. And look at these adorable places here. Maybe it’s a special church service. Everyone seems to be older. Ah, it’s a really It is church. You know what? It’s a Friday during Lent. I wonder if it’s like confession or some sort of service. I’m a bad Catholic and I don’t know what the event is. I bet it’s confession or [Music] something. Um [Music] We’ve been here twice for breakfast and today it was a total of only €22. We’ve got two waters, two cappuccinos, an americano, two pastries, and a ham and cheese sandwich. €22. It’s a great place. Great prices. This morning we are exploring west of the Plaza Doul and we are going to go around the Royal Palace. Now unfortunately I tried to get my tickets online for the Royal Palace and they were sold out for the weekend. Now, we planned our day trips around uh the weather and the availability of the train tickets to go to Segoia and Toledo, which left me Sunday as the day we’re exploring uh Madrid and was going to go see the Royal Palace. And unfortunately, those tickets have been sold out. So, we’re going to go explore around the Royal Palace and see if uh we can possibly get tickets inside. But, I will take you along. This is Kaya de Arun. This building up ahead here, this is Tiatro Rial. This is Madrid’s premier opera house and it’s one of Europe’s finest. It was originally opened in 1850. Kings and queens once attended performances here directly from their palace residence, which is just on the other side, right down here. After an extensive renovation completed in 1997, the theater has reclaimed its glory as a world-class venue for opera and ballet. Now we continue down this road towards the royal palace. The royal palace and grounds are absolutely huge. We’re approaching from the east right about here, just east of the royal palace. This is a beautiful manicured garden here east of the palace. And it’s not even the official palace gardens. Even if you can’t get tickets to go inside, I recommend you wander the grounds. It’s absolutely beautiful. The gardens are manicured. There’s fountains and the buildings of course are gorgeous. Sometimes uh what we noticed at the at the Praau Museum was that there was timed entry when you buy your tickets online, but if you just show up and wait in line, you’re able to get in. So, I’m hoping the situation is the same with the Royal Palace. It might not be. Um I’m a little disappointed, but I didn’t want to have every moment scheduled ahead. I wanted to leave room for flexibility. and weather conditions. And so this is what happens. Visitors without tickets. Let’s go to the end of the line. We are going to try waiting in that line. See if we can get a ticket. While my family’s holding the place for me, we’re going to walk right in this center area and see what kind of photos or other opportunities there are here. There’s a lot to see. There’s this incredible cathedral. I’m sure that’s the Royal Cathedral. And here is the official front of the palace. Now, it looks like to the left is the Royal Gallery. I’m assuming those are famous art paintings. And it looks like over this wall there’s an incredible view of the city. Over this wall is the official palace gardens. And it is absolutely immense. [Music] I’d say we’ve been in line about a half an hour and we are almost up front. And what you’ll notice is there are two lines. I don’t know if I described this already, but there’s a line to the right that is for people without tickets and then there’s a line to the left people with tickets. So, you do still have to wait in line even if you do have tickets, but of course it was much shorter. I am so happy to report that we were able to wait in line and get entry tickets right away. but we didn’t have to come back at a later time. Now, we were able to purchase a combination ticket of the palace and the gallery. Now, I thought I wanted to go see the palace and the kitchen, but they said that the kitchen is only available by guided tour and it’s only in Spanish. So, we’re going to skip that and we’re going to see the gallery and the palace. So, come on in and I’ll show you the prices here on the screen. [Music] As you enter, the palace has amazing wow power. Madrid’s royal palace is the largest functioning royal residence in Western Europe. It has over 3,400 rooms and it covers nearly 1.5 million square ft. That is absolutely mind-boggling. Now, the royal family doesn’t currently live here, but they still hold royal functions here. The palace sits on the site of the old Alcazar of Madrid, an old Moish castle that turned fortress and it was burned down on Christmas Eve in 1734. Construction of this current palace started in 1738 and the first royal resident moved in around 1764. The self-guided tour is quite significant. There’s many, many rooms you can visit. And the most stunning feature, in my opinion, is the chandeliers. Just breathtaking. in every single room. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dining table this big, except of course in the movies. And the throne room here is still used today for royal ceremonies. The palace was absolutely incredible. So many rooms on the second floor and just the chandeliers by themselves were absolutely amazing. And now from the center, you go to the back by the view to the galleria. We’re going to go check out some of the beautiful artwork here. And you can see people just having a great time out here in the open space between the palace and the [Music] cathedral. And here is the entrance to the galleria. The royal gallery is a little bit hidden and unassuming. At least entering up from here. I think there is more than one entrance. I had to check in my backpack and was not allowed to bring my camera around. The cell phone was okay, so I was able to get a few clips in here. There are three levels. It makes up over 430,000 square ft and it’s built into the hillside here overlooking the royal gardens. I have a feeling that inside there were some really good views that I just missed. This is a new experience in Madrid. It officially opened to the public in June of 2023. actually didn’t realize that it was so new. It was designed to specifically showcase the vast royal art collection that was previously not accessible to the [Music] public. Well, that was indeed a treat. There are several levels. Now, the weirdest thing when you go into the Galleria is that you just start walking down this handicap ramp and it seems like you’re in the wrong place. You just keep going down, going down, going down with nothing to see, and you wonder if you are walking to the exit. But that’s just the way it is. Uh you go down and then you start at the very bottom level and uh well, there’s three. It just goes down. The levels go down and then you can elevator back up to the top when you’re done. So, um, so many precious items from all the royalty over the years. And they do talk about how it was, um, a sign of power to have so many luxurious things. So, that was very enjoyable. And out here on the patio, the overlook, I didn’t notice that you could see snowy mountains in the distance. I think maybe they were covered in clouds when I peeked my head over the ledge earlier today. So, that is our look at the Royal Palace. So, we’ll see what else we do here during our stay in Madrid. So, after all of these sites, we really worked up a royal [Music] appetite. Now, I’m taking you to my favorite place in town. And this was also one of the more scenic roads we walked along in this area of Madrid. And finally, the sun came out. [Music] I think that might be it ahead straight ahead. We are headed back to the Marcato de San Miguel. It’s a gourmet food hall with tons of tapas that you can select and lots of variety to drink. You can kind of walk around with your drink and sample the different foods. We tried it our first day here and we really really enjoyed it. So that’s where we’re going to head back for some snacks. [Music] So, if your feet are tired like ours are, the first thing you’re going to want to do is find a place to sit because sitting is at a premium in here. So, let’s see if we can find anywhere. Just a few steps from Plaza Mayor, the Maccado de San Miguel is Madrid’s most famous food market. It originally opened in 1916 as a traditional neighborhood food market where locals could go for their daily necessities. And it functioned as one of Madrid’s primary food distribution centers. But in the late 20th century, it did fall into decline. but it was restored and relaunched in 2009 as a gourmet food hall, blending oldworld charm with upscale bites. Inside, you’ll find over 30 vendors offering a wide variety of traditional and gourmet foods. And let me tell you, it is popular. We liked it so much there, we ate there twice during our stay. On our first visit, we were lucky enough to find a little table in the back, but today there was no such luck. I had intentions of showing you more of that market, but it was so incredibly packed. I could barely I could barely get around in there, and I certainly couldn’t uh film the food. There’s just people everywhere. But there is um lots to choose from. Absolutely delicious. It is a Sunday afternoon and this is the most crowded I’ve seen it since I’ve been here. This is Plaza Mayor. Yeah. We’re gonna cross it and go on the other side and we’re gonna find Chocolataria de Sanz. How’d I do? G I N E S Plaza Mayor is one of Madrid’s most iconic and historically significant spaces. It was built in 1619 under the reign of King Philip III. Throughout its 400year history, Plaza Mayor has seen royal proclamations, bull fights, public executions, and theatrical performances. Today, it’s a vibrant public space surrounded by restaurants and cafes with plenty of outdoor seating. It’s a lovely place to see all kinds of characters. Now, we’re headed to find some churros. We have tried several different places during our first week in Spain, but the place I’m headed to next is historic. So, there’s an olive stall in that marcado. That is my favorite. And they sell vermouth. And they sell vermouth on draft. You can ask for I asked for one that was sweet. I’d never had vermouth before. And it was actually really good, especially with the olives. It was a great combination. 2.90. In fact, I had three olive tapas and a vermouth for a whopping $9, I think. So, we’re going to stop here at the Chteria Chocolaria. Chocolataria. Uh, this just famous place and so I thought we’d try it since everybody says this is one of the places you need to check out when you’re here. And look at the crowds and it’s in this historic building. [Music] Is this the same place? It is. There’s a shorter line over here. H. [Music] So, this place has been in business for over a hundred years. And there’s several different lines you can get into. Now, pay attention because one of the first lines we were in was for takeaway only and we want to actually sit down and enjoy enjoy our churros. So, take a moment to pay attention. Oh, right here. Okay, great. Thank you. Gracias. All right, we found a seat right here. So when you get here, pay attention because there’s several different lines and um we’re the ones kind of around the corner was for eating inside and they want you to come and order and then they find you a table. So in America, our churros come with like the cinnamon and sugar on the outside and these are all plain deep fried and then you dip them in the chocolate. So it takes some getting used to. I tend to like the cinnamon sugar kind better, but um if you’re really into chocolate, it’s like a very thick chocolate sauce. It’s not a syrup and it’s not fudge and it’s but it’s thicker than hot chocolate. So, it has kind of a unique thickness. So, we will compare and see how we like the chocolate here. The chocolate here was definitely the best here at San. We’ve tried several different spots and I guess it’s popular for very good reason. What’s most noticeable about this city is how just how crowded and busy it is pretty much all the time. Uh it is just really really happening. Now, of course, we’re in the downtown historic district where lots of visitors come, but just every store, every restaurant, there’s just People everywhere having a great time. Hope you enjoyed this tour of Madrid. This city was so much fun. Up next, we’ll be sharing with you Toledo and Siggoia. So, be sure and subscribe and I’ll see you next time. Nice to meet you. [Music]

Madrid Spain was an amazing city for our home base during our Spain travels this year. We spent 5 days staying in Puerto del Sol and explored many of best things to do in this town. The Prado Museum, the Royal Palace, Retiro Park , Tapas, Churros and more! Don’t miss this new Spanish adventure on Swifty Travels!

Don’t miss the small town of Toledo just a 30min train ride from Madrid! https://youtu.be/lgPxpDyVq1A

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Music Provided by Epidemic Sound: Try one month free on me!:
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:57 Prado Museum
02:53 Retiro Park
10:00 Teatro Real
10:40 Approaching Royal Palace- Finding Ticket Office
12:44 Royal Palace
14:54 Royal Gallery
17:25 Mercado del San Miguel
19:50 Plaza Mayor
21:00 San Gines Chocolateria

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