{"id":7793,"date":"2006-06-20T22:27:05","date_gmt":"2006-06-21T05:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/?p=7793"},"modified":"2011-12-10T10:08:30","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T18:08:30","slug":"arrival-in-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2006\/06\/20\/arrival-in-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrival in Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

We flew in with a connection at Schiphol<\/a> in Amsterdam; our flight to Madrid<\/a> was a little late. We took a cab from the airport and got to the hotel around 1:30P.<\/p>\n

We’re staying at the <\/a>Best Western Premier Hotel Santo Domingo<\/a>. The room is small but inexpensive – they claim they have wireless internet but I don’t get a signal in the room. By a little after three we’d unpacked a bit and washed up. Its warm here, probably in the low to mid 80’s. As we walked it started to rain – very interesting, it rained wide space, big drops for a few minutes and then stopped, over an over again during the afternoon. I went back to the hotel to get my hat and Aviva’s umbrella.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a>
The sign for the Hotel Santo Domingo <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The subway entrance at Santo Domingo <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The entry key for our room <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The entry key for our room <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

First up was <\/a>Convento de la Encarnacion. We hung around for 1\/2 hour for the tour to start – they only let you go though with a tour guide. And the tour is in Spanish; we finally gave up and left.<\/p>\n

\"There <\/a>
There are street signs in beautiful ceramic tile all over the city <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The main facade of the Convento de la Encarnacion <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

We walked past the <\/a>Palacio Real<\/a>. It wasn’t open, some special event was going on.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a>
A view of the Palacio Real plaza <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A policia truck loaded with horses <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

We walked up to the <\/a>Catedral de la Almudena<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/a>
An arial view of the Cathedral (lower left) and the palace (upper right) <\/div> <\/div>
\"This <\/a>
This is a view of the facade from the entry on the side <\/div> <\/div>
\"I <\/a>
I thought the pattern of the inside of the front facade was interesting <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Central <\/a>
Central Door, south facade: Pope John Paul II during the consecration of the Cathedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A wider view of the facade – the clouds were spectacular <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A detail of the front facade of the Catedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The interior was surprisingly colorful – this is a view of the main ceiling <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Vaults <\/a>
Vaults of the central nave <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The Chapel of the Virgin of the Almudena <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Then we walked down Calle de Mayor to the <\/a>Plaza Mayor. Lots of tourist shopping but a few other stores as well.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a>
A painted building on Plaza Mayor <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A detail of the painted building <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A view down a street from Plaza Mayor <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

We then hiked back to the hotel, spent and tired from the heat, humidity and sunshine (not to mention the flight in). We ate dinner at the hotel – eating at 8:30P isn’t normal for us, we’ll have to figure that out as we stay here. The food was simple and good.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\nTranslate<\/span><\/a>\"\"\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We flew in with a connection at Schiphol in Amsterdam; our flight to Madrid was a little late. We took a cab from the airport and got to the hotel around 1:30P. We’re staying at the Best Western Premier Hotel Santo Domingo. The room is small but inexpensive – they claim they have wireless internet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1070,1069,143],"tags":[1075,2408,1074],"class_list":["post-7793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-madrid","category-spain","category-travel-foreign","tag-almudena-cathedral","tag-madrid","tag-spain-2006"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-21H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}