Madrid and Day Trips : 10 Days November Itinerary

Published on by Art

We traveled to Spain in November 2023. This was our first European trip since COVID-19 started, and our 3rd attempt to visit Spain. It still surprises us that we finally made it.

November is a wonderful time to visit Madrid. The city experiences mild weather, with temperatures averaging around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius). It’s also a great time to visit because the crowds are smaller and hotel prices are more reasonable.

We used Madrid as our home base for this trip and spent most of our time in the city. There is so much to do there! We did a day trip to Toledo (only 30 min from Madrid on the train) and spent a night in Seville (it was a good idea, we could have stayed there longer).

I was writing this blog in real time, usually in the evenings. I used this app to do it (Polarsteps) and to share updates with our family. I highly recommend this wonderful trip tracker, which offers an offline mode and syncs ups everything when you get online. This is a useful feature when you are abroad, although WiFi is available almost everywhere in Spain.

Day 1 – Richmond and Philadelphia

We left Richmond at noon on a flight to Philadelphia. We had 7 hours layover here, and my parents drove over from New York to meet with us.

We had a nice lunch in the center of the city at Parc restaurant. This was our wedding anniversary, so Tanya picked the poshest place to eat, the high society person she is. French bread was amazing, and my parents enjoyed the onion soup.

On the way to the airport, we stopped at Burtam’s Garden, apparently the first public garden in America. We were the only visitors there, on that cold and windy November day.

When we came back to the airport, we still had 3 hours before the flight to Madrid, so we crashed at Minute Suites. The day didn’t seem too long.

Day 2 – First day in Madrid

The day started with a sunrise in the window of our plane. We got a good rest on the flight. After a long queue at the passport control, we took an airport shuttle bus (203) to the center of the city and walked over to our hotel. We passed some parks and palaces on the way – we will have to check them out later.

The room wasn’t ready yet, but they treated us to a free breakfast instead. Tanya hasn’t eaten since lunch in Philadelphia, so she was happy about the all-you-can-eat buffet. We will be skipping lunch today 🙂

It is 7:35pm, and we just got back to the hotel. We feel that going to bed would be such a waste of time since there is so much to do and to see, and while our bodies don’t protest yet, we know that they will give up the moment our heads hit the pillows. Before I run out of energy, here is a quick summary of today.

We did the entire Old City walk from Rick Steves book. The walk took us about 3 hours and included the main squares, a market, a bunch of shops, some parks, etc. We were passing by Royal Palace and decided to go in – that took us another 1.5 hours. Too bad that photos are prohibited in the most impressive rooms. And yes, we took one really bad selfy there. After a short break, we went in search of tapas bars, but we were too early, so went back to Mercado De San Miguel (the market) and loaded on the tasty stuff there

Day 3 – Madrid – Prado

We started the day with a visit to Prado Museum. We spent over 2 hours there and only covered the highlights by following a self-guided tour from our Rick Steves book. Since we were there early, the place was still relatively uncrowded, however that changed when we were finishing up.

It was amazing to see the paintings, which we knew from childhood. Probably the biggest surprise was the Goya collection. It follows his entire career with all the different periods – you can’t even tell these were painted by the same person. We especially liked his “cartoons”, yes, Goya did some artwork for Disney. Kidding.

We were all cultured up after exiting the museum, so we went to see a botanical garden right behind it and then crossed the road to go to Retiro Park. It’s huge! We walked around, took weird selfies at Chrystal Palace, listened to a string duet playing outside, and took a bunch of pictures.

Exhausted and a bit hungry, we found a small and unpretentious place behind our hotel to have some lunch tapas. The food was delicious, and we did learn a lesson about taking recommendations when you don’t understand a word of what’s been said. We thought we were getting fish, but we ended up with meat. All good. It’s very hard to go wrong with food in Madrid.

After a short siesta, we went for a walk around night Madrid. For a while, we were just going around the neighborhood full of bars and people out on Friday night strolls. We had some more tapas and rode up to the top floor of Círculo de Bellas Artes to see the best panorama of the night city. We came back to the hotel along Gran Via, which is Madrid’s version of 5th Avenue.

Day 4 – Walking Madrid – Off the beaten path

Typical Madrid itineraries suggest going on a day trip after you had seen all the main attractions. We will have plenty of time for that after moving to our second hotel, which is right next the main train station. Today, we went exploring several mostly residential neighborhoods off the beaten path. In other words, people actually live there.

We started in Barrio de las Latras or Literary Quarter. This is the place, where many famous writers lived, and the first square, Plaza de Santa Anna had at least two statues of the literary geniuses. From there, we just wondered off without any particular direction until we got to Latin Quarter. It had only been 2.5 hours since we finished our crazy food hotel breakfast, but how could we miss a chance to have tapas at Cava Baja? This is the most famous tapas street in Madrid, so we just had to sit down and have some. We swore not to eat until tomorrow, the promise we broke later.

After some more wondering around, we ended up at Plaza de Espania. On that big and modern square, we saw the monument to Servantes with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza riding their horses. Behind the monument is Sabatini Garden with the nice view of Royal Palace. And just a few steps from there, there is the strangest place in Madrid – a Egyptian Temple. It is not very impressive, but the city view behind it is pretty cool.

We walked back to our hotel through the few more semi-quiet neighborhoods, and with each hour the streets were getting busier and busier until crowds of Madritians out for weekend shopping had became unreal. One street was blocked completely with a huge queue. We were intrigued, so we followed the line – it led us to the place selling lottery tickets! Why? No idea.

We were tired and ready to get away from the crowds, so we headed back to our hotel. Remember how we decided not to eat anymore? Well, there is this street behind our hotel with some cute small restaurants. We had to stop at one of them. We deserved it, my Apple Watch clocked 17,000 steps.

Day 5 – Toledo

We left Madrid on a 10:20am train. It has taken us some time to move to a new hotel near the station, hence a later start. Last night, we read several blogs about spending a day in Toledo, and we had our plan. The return train was at 6:20pm. Plenty of time.

As always, we started with a city walk from the book. It took us through all the main sights. The city was relatively uncrowded. Toledo made a huge impression on us. Every street and every building in the old town worth a picture. No wonder that my phone almost ran out of battery in the first 2 hours. Luckily, we were able to charge it at the restaurant during lunch. By the way, the lunch was tasty, once more a recommendation from the Rick Steves book.

Our top 5 Toledo experiences:

1. The view of the city from Alcantra bridge.

2. Inside the cathedral.

3. Baby lamb with potato’s for lunch.

4. Jewish quarter.

5. Wandering around with no direction away from touristy main drags.

 And the special mention goes to Santo Tome, a small chapel with just one El Greco masterpiece. We’ve never spent that much time in front of a painting.

On the train back, there was a typical Spanish confusion about train cars. The sign on our car said one thing when the actual sequence of the car was completely different. We were in the wrong car (went by the sign, not by logic) and patiently waited to be kicked off our seats while listening to the argument around us in at least five different languages. Miraculously, nobody came to claim our seats. There is probably a moral to this little story, but it escapes me right now.

We are on the train as I am writing this. Tanya just asked if we are going to eat again today. This will be a very tough decision to make.

Day 6 – Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

In Spain, people start they day late, so we didn’t feel bad about leaving our hotel room at noon. I our defense, we had spent some time planning an impromptu overnight trip to Seville for tomorrow. Plus, it was raining in the morning.

What do you do when it rains? You go to a museum. On Mondays, most of the museums are closed in Madrid, with an exception of Thyssen-Bornemisza (which also free on that day). We thought that the line would be unreal, but there was hardly any people there! Where were all the tourists? Eating tapas?

The museum was one of our favorites, ever. It was a private collection of some reach industrialist-turn-baron. You walk around four floors, where the paintings are sequenced by period and once in a while run into Rembrandt or Monet or Kandinsky or Chagall. The Picasso exhibition was closed for some reason, but we didn’t care. Our favorite piece was The Grey House by Chagall (it’s the one with the word “durak” written on the fence, you can’t miss it). Our least favorite was “White on White” by some little-known dude. We’ve never seen hyper-realistic paintings before – they are more detailed than high resolution photos. Another highlight was a small piece called “The Naughty Drummer”, which depicts a typical day at Harrington’s household: Pierce entertaining himself, baby E laying in her cradle while Michelle watches them both patiently. You can find these paintings in the photos from today.

After the museum, we took another stroll through the city, this time with no direction at all. We ended up away from the center and the touristy spots, where regular people live and go about their days.

Today was a short day as we need to rest to get up early tomorrow.

Day 7 – Seville

Seville wasn’t on our itinerary until 24 hours ago. It is too long of a train ride (2.5 hours) for a day trip from Madrid. But what if we could stay and night there? And what if we could find an AirBnB for only $60 not for fro the city center? Sold. This is how we found ourselves on a train to Seville today.

We didn’t expect much. After all, we just had an amazing trip to Toledo 2 days ago. What can top that? Seville can.

When a taxi dropped us off at the main square in front of the cathedral, we didn’t know where to look. I immediately started to worry about the number of pictures, which I would have to post today. 100? 200? Relax people, it is only about 50.

We started with a traditional old city walk from our favorite book. The walk goes through what used to be the Jewish quarter, but then became a Christian city center when the Jews were either killed or expelled in 15th century we didn’t know that Spanish Inquisition started with the sole purpose of ridding the country from Jews. The Inquisition of course dealt with other heretics like Bruno or Copernicus, but that was their side gig during the slow Jew-burning periods. In all seriousness, the story of Spanish Jews is nothing short of horrible.

After the walk, we visited the cathedral, which is similar to the own we saw in Toledo, only bigger. Plus, this cathedral has Columbus’s tomb, and the one in Toledo doesn’t. Score for Seville. We also climbed the bell tower, which is the only thing that’s left from the mosque. The view from the top is another point for Seville.

The top experience, hats down was Alcazar. The palace is breathtaking beautiful in the Moorish-Gothic-Renaissance sort of way. We got there late in the day, when the crowds already left. After a quick photo session inside, we headed away from the few remaining tourists and got lost in the garden. Tanya spotted a family of orange-eating parrots and chased around some peacocks, who didn’t want to be photographed. No animals were harmed in the process. Peacocks and parrots were fine as well. We liked the gardens so much, we wanted to spend the night there, but we got hungry and had to leave.

Tanya has been a real sport today. After dinner at the restaurant recommended by our airBnB host Maria, we went for another nighttime walk around the old city. It was worth it, but I didn’t think Tanya would make it back to our apartment. I offered a taxi ride, but she proudly refused. As I am writing this, she is fast asleep, physically and emotionally drained. It was a good day

Day 8 – Lazy Second Day in Seville

We were lazy on our second day in Seville. This is the best feeling in a new city when you’ve done all the mandatory sightseeing and now can enjoy it without the rush or a plan of any kind. We woke up late. We didn’t leave our apartment until 11:30. We walked slow with 6 hours in front of us and no commitments to see anything important.

Our first stop was a strange modern artifact called Setas, which is basically a pile of wooden mushrooms the size of a city block. Under these mushrooms is a pretty little market, where we would have definitely eaten something but for the fact that we had just have breakfast. Google Maps then took us to the River to check out Triana, a trendy neighborhood worth 2 stars in Rick Steves book. In the center of the city, there is no feeling that the river is so close. You walk the streets and there it is – wide, calm and very dirty river. But it does make a nice background for a few photos.

Triana is full of cute narrow streets, colorful houses, orange trees (well, these are everywhere in Seville!). churches and of course, the restaurants. After some amount of walking, we were ready for a meal, so we found a square in front of a church and made a camp. Seriously. We did what Spaniards do. We ordered drinks, some food and then just sat there forever doing nothing. Tanya said that this was her favorite activity in Spain so far. Why did it take us so long to try it?

Our next and last destination was Plaza de Espania. When we took a taxi from the train station yesterday, the drive who spoke no English kept pointing to it as we passed by. He got very excited, but Rick Steves didn’t give this place even one star, so we didn’t really know what all the fuss was about. To get to the square , we had to go through a very nice garden, where we did another one of these sit-and-do-nothing things. Tanya even took a nap (still recharging after yesterday). When we finally made it to Plaza de Espania, we realized that all the postcard-perfect pictures of Seville (as well as countless movies) were shot right there. It was then decided that Plaza De Espania in Seville is the most beautiful place we had seen so far in Spain.

While today was a lazy day, we did learn a few interesting things. First is that oranges on the trees are not really edible, too bitter. They look good, however, very appetizing. Tanya picked one up from the ground and is determined to try it. We will report if the guide book is correct.

We also discovered that a bottle of water costs 3 euro at a museum, 90c at the street stand and 20c at the supermarket. The water also costs more than wine at the restaurant. Go figure.

We are on the train back to Madrid, making plans for remaining 2 days of our vacation. We really loved Seville, and there are couple of more places we want to visit before getting on the plane.

Day 9 – Food Tour in Madrid

We didn’t feel like sightseeing today, so we decided to dedicate the day to sampling the best of Madrid food. After all, this is Thanksgiving, so if we were back in America, we would have been eating all day.

We started with a soup place called Zuppos. It was empty at noon when we got there. Normally, it is quite busy, but we hit a low period in the day, in between of Madridians meals and tourist group lunch stops. Tanya had a Thai soups and said that it was the best soup overall she has ever eaten. We will keep it a secret from Rina. I had a pumpkin soup, which was very soft with just a bit of kick of ginger. The bread was very good as well.

In one the articles about Madrid food scene, I read about the local’s favorite lunch food, bocadillo de calamari, which is a simple fried calamari sandwich served on crusty baguette-style bread. There is a bar called La Campana just off Plaza Mayor, and we headed there after soup for the second lunch. As we crossed the square, people were setting up the Christmas market stalls, mostly various decorations and Nativity figurines. It was easy to find the bar because of the line. I guess this place does have the best fried calamari. Tanya is not big on shellfish, but I enjoyed my sandwich.

From Plaza Mayor, it is only a few minutes to the tapas street, Cava Baja. Time for the third lunch? Why not! As long as we walk a little in between our meals, we can do it all day. Our next stop was Los Huevos de Lucio. For our fourth meal of the day (I am counting breakfast), we had croquettes (small lightly breaded and fried béchamel fritters), tomato with sardines, beer and vermouth.

Next came the siesta. Yes, we went back to the hotel to get some rest and prepare for the last chapter of our food tour of Madrid. Dinner here start around 9-10pm, but of course we would be asleep by then. The compromise: 8pm reservation right after a popular restaurant called El Social opens its doors. Luckily, it takes 35 minutes to walk there, so even if we leave the hotel not hungry, we bound to develop good appetite by the time we reach the restaurant.

We were at the restaurant at 8pm sharp. There was only one other pair of customers there, but the waiter asked for our reservation. The food was amazing, just like the review predicted. We split spring rolls and grilled fish.

Tonight, all the Christmas lights were turned on for the first time on the main Madrid avenues. We happened to walk to the restaurant during passeo, which is the time when everyone is out on the streets for a before-dinner promenade. Even on the weeknights, the crowds were plentiful and cheerful. Some people even broke into singing out of the blue.

On the way back, the streets were quiet. We snapped some pictures of the Christmas decorations and peeked into Royal Botanic Garden to see the light show.

Today’s report is a bit boring as I am reading it. We didn’t do anything super exciting, but I don’t think we ever dedicated the entire day to eating out, so this one will be remembered.

Day 10 – Rest Day

I had too much to eat yesterday and spent the entire day in bed recovering. We took a short walk to Retiro Park, but other than that the day was a total waste. On a positive note, we caught up on our sleep. You know how sometimes you come back from vacation and feel like you need another vacation to rest after running around sightseeing all the time? Well, this is not going to be the case here.

Day 11 – Going Home

This is the end of our trip. On the way to the airport, we talked about the last 10 days. Tanya’s top experience was Prada, for me, it was Plaza Espania in Seville. What does this say about us that Tanya was most impressed by the works of famous painters while I liked a tacky, touristy landmark less than 100 years old?

We did agree that the best part of the trip was its slow pace. We could have fitted a lot more into it, after all we only took two side trips from Madrid and didn’t visit a required third major museum in the city. We didn’t see bullfighting or even a bullfighting museum. We didn’t go to a flamenco show. The list goes on and on. Maybe next time, we said. We did spent many hours just walking the streets, people-watching, sitting on the benches in the parks or near the churches, trying different dishes (lesson for the future: smaller portions!), and in general, just taking it easy.

I don’t want to profess that after only 10 days we understand Spanish people. We know a little more about them. We know that they like to eat. We know that they dress really well, and mostly in black. We know that they ride their scooters and bicycles everywhere. We also know that in the evening, they take to the streets and walk around with their families and friends. If we had more time, we would have loved to learn more about this country.

Next time.