real madrid

when london was to celebrate queen elizabeth’s golden jubilee weekend from june 1 to 4 in 2002, i flew to madrid for a spanish long weekend. actually, though i’d visited barcelona and several cities in andalucía before, i’d never been to madrid, i’d known of madrid only through visual and written information until then.
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so, that was real madrid. you might know this if you were a football fan: “real” in spanish means royal, incidentally. my hotel there was villa real, which is not a super hip but really cool hotel with 5 stars. matter of fact, it was the 1st prize of a travel essay contest organised by a spanish travel agency and mr geek, whom i went out with at the time, won. mr geek, who is a self-claimed anarchist, invited me there to escape the golden jubilee together.

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the weather was brilliant in madrid as you can imagine. by day, we rambled about town visiting museos such as the prado, reina sofía and thyssen-bornemisza for master pieces of velázquez, goya, el greco, bosch, but picasso’s guernica was “away’ unfortunately, and jardín botánico was a real oasis for chilling out. by night, we went out for tapas, or a meal at 1 michelin-starred zalacaín, or to teatro real for the modern adapted “madam butterfly” where i needed a bucket for my tears.
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it is always so nice to go on holiday with a companion who has lots in common. still, to be honest with you (and with me too), my memories of being a traveller can be more vivid somehow when i travel all by myself. maybe, because i’m too selfish and greedy to have all experiences in foreign countries to myself? and, because i want to be free anytime for taking pictures without keeping anyone waiting. in this sense, our madrid trip was fun but tends to slip out of my memory.
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