Updated on October 4, 2017
Day 0 of Spanish Vacation: Madrid on February 1st, 2017
This post follows the previous ones about flights on Qatar Airways from Hangzhou to Madrid, and is about the rest of our first day in Madrid.
After getting off the plane, the city of Madrid welcomed us with its modern and spacious passenger terminal (T4S). The only thing not so nice about that bamboo design was that my camera seemed not so sure about its white balance.
Lines at Madrid-Barajas Airport T4S Immigration
The images in this post are hosted on Imgur. Email me should there be any display problems.
However, that warm-hearted greeting wore out quickly, as we walked towards the airport immigration with winding queues.
To make matters worse, my newly-installed Sim-card didn’t work. My fault that I later learned it’s a German number and I should include country code and enable data while roaming.
To make matters even worse, I needed to answer several questions before I can use the Airport’s free WiFi, which I wasn’t able to because the “submit” button just didn’t work.
So after a Facebook-less hour we cleared all the airport stuff and boarded the commuter train downtown.
After nearly forgetting to transfer trains, We got off the train at Sol Station, and walked towards our hotel near Plaza del Callao.
Buildings around Puerta del Sol
So 4:30pm and we finally got things settled at our hotel. Given that we didn’t have much of a day left, we decided to visit Museo Nacional del Prado for the rest of day (since we were still students and could enjoy free admission).
Hotel StairsIt was a little bit scary to look down along these winding stairs to the ground.
Building around Plaza del Callao
Buildings along Calle Gran Vía
Buildings along Calle Gran Vía
Metropolis Building on Calle Gran VíaInsurance company.
Círculo de Bellas Artes Facade
Statue of Miguel de Cervantes
Balcony Art of Objetos de Arte Toledano
Pedestrian Street of Paseo del Prado
Museo Nacional del Prado was a store-your-bag no-photo museum, with quite a collection of arts. My friend and I seemed particularly interested in the landscapes by Goya.
Statue of Goya outside Museo Nacional del Prado
Museo Nacional del Prado Visitor Entrance at Night
Balcony Art of Objetos de Arte Toledano
Plus Ultra Seguros BuildingInsurance company.
Congreso de los DiputadosSpain’s lower house of representatives.
Plaza del Callao
When checking into our hotel, we found there was a Five Guys just down the stairs. Since I still had vivid memory of how exactly five six people managed to run a fastfood restaurant near Rockefeller Center, we decided to give it a try.
Burger and Fries at Five GuysAs oily as the American ones, more expensive though.
It turned out that, the burger tasted still like the American ones, the fries were as oily. It’s just that I counted 17 people working in the store instead of five (including one that stood at the doorway doing nothing, which was very Europe by the way.), which troubled me greatly.
END
Day 0 of Spanish Vacation: Madrid on February 1st, 2017 by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.