Madrid is a beautiful city: I would argue that it easily trumps Barcelona or, for that matter, anywhere else I've been in Spain. Parque del Buen Retiro, which we visited on our first full day in Madrid, was astonishing (and enormous), easily one of my new favourite places. I've stolen a few snapshots from my travelling companion, but I don't think they do justice to the park at all:
Palacio de Cristal (above). Truly beautiful.
Oh dear, I'm so bad at this photo-uploading malarkey that I'm going to have to stop there and redirect you to the Lonely Planet website's page about Madrid - where the city is described, quite brilliantly, as 'an ex-convent schoolgirl, a rebellious teenager who pushed the boundaries' - or better still, I would redirect you to the city itself. We got return tickets for £50, so there's really no excuse.
I can't fault Madrid for its regal beauty, incredibly welcoming people, lovely food (I could eat tapas every day), and, of course, gorgeous sunny weather (I was bright pink within a matter of hours, how embarrassing). We stayed in Alcala de Henares, about half an hour outside of Madrid. While it may not neccessarily be somewhere you would be willing to travel half an hour out of the city for, it was a cute, quaint little town that I feel lucky to have been made aware of. It is a Medieval university city and World Heritage Site: it didn't surprise me to learn that it is twinned with Cambridge. It is the birthplace of Cervantes and Catherine of Aragon (I was such a Tudor geek when I was a child; well, I was an everything-geek, but I particularly loved the Tudors, even before that name became synonymous with the sight of Jonathan Rhys Meyers getting jiggy).
The only thing I could fault, and I'm hesitant about writing this, was... how can I put it? My travelling companion was unhappy for a lot of the trip, and this manifested itself in her chosing not to acknowledge my presence for a large proportion of the time we spent in Spain. In my pretentious moments (of which there are many), I have imagined myself alone in a foreign country, somewhere with balmy heat and thin cotton curtains that blow ethereally onto the wrought-iron balcony, and the mental image has been quite pleasing. I've cast myself as a romantic, mysterious, possibly tragic figure; spending my days staring wistfully in the distance, or sat reading battered Penguin classics in the sun. And though I stared from the balcony, in balmy heat, across to a small church opposite us, there was nothing romantic about my loneliness as I silently prayed that no volcano would disrupt my journey home, or whilst I considered making my own way to the airport a day early. There was nothing romantic about being alone, tearful, in the bathroom of a club at 4am, having been abandoned by my friend; nothing romantic about the beats of songs from 2002 thudding into my consciousness.
A beautiful city, yes; but as I stood in pouring rain at Luton airport at midnight, clad in summer sandals and an insubstantial summer dress, waiting for the long bus ride back to London, I had never been happier to be back in Britain.
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