it makes up with a contagious joie de vivre that the sleepy small towns and workaday provincial capitals fail to express. But what Madrid lacks in awe-inspiring monuments. Madrid has only been the country’s capital since 1561, when King Felipe II moved the royal court from northerly Valladolid south to what was then a village of 30,000. Yet there’s something about this city that never sleeps that keeps calling me back (perhaps it’s the nonrefundable round-trip plane tickets, but I digress). Madrid is far too huge, loud, and expensive for my tastes, and this introvert can only take the capital in small doses. Give me extroverted, Moorish-influenced Sevilla or Córdoba subdued, Old Spain outposts like León, Zamora, or Teruel or my charming adopted hometowns of Úbeda or Santiago de Compostela. I’ll be up front with y’all right now: Madrid is not my favorite city in this country. And since my family is coming to visit me for Christmas, I think I ought to distill my impressions and tidbits into something I can share with them while I’m their unofficial tour guide for the week. I’ve never felt the need to put together a blog post about the Spanish capital-until now.Īpproximately half a dozen mini trips to Madrid later, I feel like I’ve gotten a chance to get a true feel for this capital city and finally seen all the museums I’ve wanted to visit.

I’ve never really done a proper “city trip” to Madrid in my time here because it’s always been a convenient bookend for flights to and from the States. I’ve been writing online for two and a half years now, but a Madrid-shaped hole on this blog has been growing bigger and bigger ever since I first landed at Madrid-Barajas airport in September 2012.

Highlighter in spanish