Archive for the ‘Discover Madrid’ Category

The Habsburg’s Madrid in Christmas

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

The Plaza Mayor, Plaza de la Villa, the Santiago neighbourhood, Mayor and Sacramento Streets compose the so-called “Habsburg’s Madrid” related to the historical epoch in which Madrid was converted in the Habsburg rule’s capital.

Felipe IV ordered the construction of the majestic building the Courts´s Prison , in order to the politic and military importance of Spain was visible in its capital. You can see the building in the Provincia Square, close to the  (Main Square).

The best idea to visit the city is rent a car in Madrid airport.

Madrid

Madrid

Its rooms were dedicated to the justice’ administration, the prison was at the back.

In the XV century the principle market of the city took place in the Main Square, called during those years “Arrabal Square”. During the XIX century that place changed lots names in a parallel way with the convulsed politic life of our country. It was called “Constitution Square”, “Republic Square”, and “Royal Square” Federal Republic Square”.

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Tea tonic, the trendiest drink

Monday, October 17th, 2011

With saffron, berries, pepper, petals of rose or cucumber… forget about all this if you want to be trendy when you order a gin tonic. This year the trendiest drink is tea tonic. From Turismo Madrid we will explain where you can try it and above all, how you can combine the five different varieties.

Gin tonic

Gin tonic

Is worthwile to rent a car in Madrid and discover the region.

This new and sophisticated gin tonic is an idea by Tanqueray Nº TEN to enhance the flavours of the distilled through a gin infused with botanicals and citrus involved in its preparation.

After having served gin in a “ball glass”, you introduce the chosen infusion bag and wait a minute to release flavours and essences. After removing the bag, add ice to the edge of the cup and serve the tonic.

You’ve learned the theory, read our clues to know where and how to implement it.

Spices: after the Art Walk, a toast to the Madrid night

Casa Pueblo (León 3), with a twenties decoration and a good atmosphere, is a good choice to enjoy a spices tea tonic. A few meters away, in León Street is La Mucca II, a restaurant and wine bar with a New York feel. High ceilings, exposed brick, large windows, it is the ideal environment for this trendy drink.

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Have a breakfast with Madrid

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Have a breakfast with its clear dawns, with its people, overlooking the Puerta de Alcalá or Botanical Garden, surrounded by books or DVDs, with a delicious chocolate or an antioxidant juice.

Just wake up, we’ll take you to have breakfast.

breakfast in Madrid

breakfast in Madrid

Is worhwile to rent a car in Madrid airport or Madrid city center and discover the region.

With tradition

La Paca (Valverde 36) is another of those retro places where you can have a good breakfast, sweet or savoury. Surrounded by white iron columns, beams in the ceiling and sit on a comfortable chair you can enjoy a delicious cake or a tasty Spanish omelette.

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Antonio Lopez at Thyssen- Bornemisza Madrid

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

A must see this summer: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum hosts a big exhibition with the old and most recent work by the Spanish painter Antonio López.

 Is worthwile to rent a car in Madrid airport or city center and discovery the city.

Antonio Lopez, Madrid
Antonio Lopez, Madrid

This exhibition has an autobiographical statement and we will be able to see and discover the paintings, sculptures and drawings by this exceptional artist. We will make a walk through Madrid’s views, his town, Tomelloso, where he was born and we will see his gardens and trees.

López’s themes

Visitors can thus appreciate the recurring themes in the universe of Antonio López and the influence of artistic tradition and his connections with it, given that the artist considers himself the heir to that tradition to an almost obsessive degree. His sensitivity to the human figure is equally present in both the sculptures and drawings.

The exhibition opens in the temporary exhibition galleries on the Museum’s ground floor with a room that aims to summarise López’s work and the vision that he has of himself as an artist and as heir to the tradition of art. This space constitutes a survey of the three major groups into which López’s output can be divided and includes his masterpieces of the last twenty years.

It features almost all his celebrated views of the city of Madrid and of one of its most famous streets, the Gran Vía, including the series on this subject on which the artist is currently working. There will also be a comprehensive selection of drawings and paintings on another of López’s principal subjects: the tree and his own kitchen garden. Also on display are representations of the human figure, a motif central to his output in both sculpture and drawing and one that reveals his continued.

The exhibition continues on the first basement level, arranged both thematically and chronologically in a display that runs from the artist’s earliest years in Tomelloso, with individual figure studies, pairs of figures, landscapes and interiors, up to works that have been loaned directly from the artist’s studio and are now shown to the public for the first time.

Finally, the exhibition is completed with the projection of two documentaries that show work of Antonio López during the last year in his studio and outdoors. Also on Saturdays in July will be screening the film El Sol del Membrillo by Víctor Erice in which we will see López painting a quince tree in the courtyard of his house to explore the process behind the creation of a work art.

Selection from the artist

The exhibition is articulated through the artist’s own gaze on his recent and earlier work, given that López has steered the selection of works and overseen their installation, working with the two curators, his daughter María López and Guillermo Solana, the Museum’s Artistic Director, as well as with the exhibition’s technical curator, Paula Luengo.

Many of the works in the present exhibition have been loaned from private collections, mostly in Spain, including that of the artist himself. A large number of them have never been published or exhibited and some are still unfinished. There are also important loans from institutions such as the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, the Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Madrid weekend

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Madrid offers your lots of things to do and see all over the year: museums, monuments, fiestas, gastronomy, Shopping, markets…

Is worthwile to rent a car in Madrid airport or Madrid city center.

 

Madrid, Gran Vía

Madrid, Gran Vía

Saturday

9 .00 a.m.–10 a.m. You should see as many things as possible. You can do it on foot or by cycle. We suggest you starting the route in the Gran Vía, the cultural and commercial heart of the city, surrounded by cinemas, theatres and shops.

10 a.m. – 2.00 p.m. From here you can get the principle tourist places in Madrid, like Puerta del Sol, Mayor Square, the Royal Palace, the Sabatini Gardens or the Almudena’s Cathedral.

2.00 p.m. – 5.00 p.m. You can eat something at the San Miguel Market (Mercado de San Miguel) for lunch and then you can have a siesta at the Retiro Park, that’s also near the centre of the capital.

5.00 p.m. – 9.00 p.m. You can see the Cibeles Fountain (Fuente de Cibeles), and Alcalá Door (Puerta de Alcalá), walking from the Retiro to the España Square, besides, you can drink a coffee at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and you can take a picture of the Metrópolis building.
9.00 p.m. – 00 a.m. Our suggestion for this night is Las Tablas tablao, in España Square, where you can have dinner, while you see a flamenco show.

Sunday
9.00 – 12 p.m. The “Art Walk” is your destination. It is called like that because along its way you can find the three most important museums of the city: Prado, Thyssen-Bornemisza and Reina Sofía. During your short travel you should visit one of these art galleries. In their rooms you can admire paintings like “Las Meninas” of Velázquez, “La Santa Catalina” of Caravaggio and “El Guernica” of Picasso, among others master pieces.

12 p.m. – 1.00 p.m. After visiting the museum you can go to the Botanic Garden that is close to Prado. All kinds of plants that come from the entire world will make very pleasant your little break, before getting on until our next stop.
1.00 p.m. – 5.00 p.m. In the other side of Gran Vía we are in the Malasaña neighbourhood. It is situated between Chueca and Argüelles, and it was the centre of the so-called the movida madrileña in the eighties’ and it was also a direct witness of the military resistance against the Napoleonic troops. In the middle of the area it’s the Dos de Mayo Square, in the same place occupied in the past for the Artillery Monteleón’s Park; the ancient barracks’ door and a statue in memory of the officials Luis Daoíz and Torres and Pedro Velarde, remind us those heroic days. Choose a restaurant that tempts your appetite and then you should go to the vintage and urban shops that there are in Malasaña.

5.00 p.m. – 6.00 p.m. This zone houses also characteristic coffee shops. You can stop at one of these and you can have a coffee. Enjoy your break!

6.00 p.m. – 9.00 p.m. Now that you have charged batteries, you can follow shopping. In Chueca there are a lot of boutiques, decoration and delicatessen products shops, such as virgin oils, wines, cheeses or chocolates. Chueca is situated between Fuencarral and Barquillo streets and it is the gay neighbourhood in Madrid since the nineties.

9.00 p.m. – 00 a.m. can have dinner in a modern restaurant of this area and before leaving the city… what do you think about a cocktail under the stars? The urban landscape that you can see on the terrace roof of the Me Madrid Reina Victoria Hotel will be your best souvenir

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Madrid hire a car you must See: Aranjuez

Friday, August 5th, 2011

Aranjuez is famous because of its Royal Palace, its gardens, its historic avenues, its bonds with the Kings and Queens, its asparagus and, of course, its strawberries. Stated Paisaje Cultural Patrimonio de la Humanidad by the UNESCO in 2001, you know when you begin your visit to the Real Sitio and Villa of Aranjuez, but never when you end up it, because of the amount of secret places that you will find in its streets.

Aranjuez

Aranjuez

Is worthwile to rent a car in Madrid city center or airport to visit the city and the area.

Leaving her home, a young woman covers a corridor and says hello to one of her neighbours. After closing the doorway, she goes past a family that looks very concentrated a map. None of them would be able to discover that if they cross this gate, they will find an old courtyard, where centuries ago, the women did the houseworks while they talked in the patio, center of the local life.

They turn a map over, trying to decide what to visit. They don’t know what to do: maybe it would be a good idea to go to the Constitución Square, where the Town Hall and the Abastos Market are located. Other choice is to visit the Bullring, which inaugurated in 1797 by Carlos IV, is one of the few bullrings of the 18th century that exists nowadays.

Meanwhile, a group of friends arrives at the Aranjuez’s Royal Palace. Stopped in front of the Armas Square, these guys look at the statues of Felipe II, Felipe V and Fernando VI, located on the palace’s roof.

Majestic, impressive, superb, stately… many are the adjectives that could be used to describe the building that they are contemplating at this moment. More than 200 years, since the King Felipe II ordered the architect Herrera to start the works until Sabatini ended up it during the reign of Carlos III, were required to build it.

They haven’t words not only to describe what they are seeing, but also to speak about the Porcelanas Room or the Espejos Hall. Suddenly, when they look out of the window, the group of friends discovers a couple strolling in the Parterre Garden toward the bridge which gives access to the Isla Garden.

In front of them, surrounded by the Tajo River, they have it, the Isla Garden. Now, they have the possibility of getting lost among its trees and to take pictures of its fountains and small squares.

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Discover San Martín Market in Madrid

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

Is this a market? Is it an exhibition room? Is it a cooking show? or a restaurant? or the coolest bar in Madrid? San Antón Market is all these and much more.

San Antón Market Madrid

San Antón Market Madrid

This renewed Market has become in a multispace place inside the trendiest neighbourhood in Madrid: Chueca. Here you can chat, know, discover, buy, eat, try and above all: enjoy. San Antón Market is a new concept of market.

Is worthwile to rent a car in Madrid city center or airport to visit the city and the area.

A market is also a place to meet other people. You can buy the essential products and you can establish other relationships with the people that go there every day. Come to San Antón Market to live another market-experience.

New materials

San Antón Market has changed inside and out. In its restructuring it has been changed the materials and has been got a better use of space, giving an area of over 6,000 square meters for our enjoyment. The materials have been used in the renovation also respond to a new model of market-development, that cares about the environment.

The building has a large skylight through which natural light enters. The solar panels are thus serving as a collector of energy. The floor is melt basalt and solid brick walls of tile. Like that, the building has been inserted in harmony with the rest of the district of Chueca. Modernity without fanfare, sustainability comfortable and enjoyable for everyone.

New concepts

Stroll through any of its three floors. On the first floor we find the traditional market. 14 places where you can purchase fruits and vegetables, a wide selection of meats, cheeses from all around the world, fish and select meats, smoked and salted meats, different types of bread … enjoy every step with the variety of colours and scents.

After the purchase, go up to the second floor: an area designed for you to feed your senses, from taste to vision, to touch and smell. Here you will be able to take a casual snack in its show cooking: Japanese cuisine, Italian, Greek specialties, seafood, chocolate, juices … you can see how they prepare it! After leaving this stock, don’t miss the exhibition hall that houses different cultural proposals.

But you will find here other options to keep enjoying this gastronomic experience. You can choose the product you want in the market stalls (meat or fish), buy what you feel like and on the third floor they cook it for you!! The terrace restaurant staff of St. Anthony’s Kitchen (La Cocina de San Antón) is going to advise the best way to prepare it, spice it and what sauce they recommend for your purchase … so you can eat it like if you were at home but you don’t need to cook it!

They also offer an extensive menu of options for lunch or dinner, either inside the restaurant or on its magnificent terrace acclimated both winter and summer, located on the roofs of Chueca. A privileged environment that it is going to delight you!

And by night?

And what about the evening? San Antón Market has a large schedule so you can go at every hour. By night, the restaurant area will remain open until 12 pm (until half past one on Fridays, Saturdays and eve of public holidays) so that after dinner you can have a drink in good company and enjoying the gentle breeze, now that high temperatures reach the capital.

Come to San Antón Market to see by yourself all these changes. And if you follow a route through the markets of Madrid, do not miss the San Miguel Market, the Paz one and the newly transformed Torrijos Market.

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The best shopping experiences in Madrid.

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Enjoy shopping in Madrid

The city of Madrid is a must-see for anyone planing a shopping trip. From the exclusiveness of some of the greatest designers and the “showrooms” of the most select names in international fashion, to traditional products from Madrid and the most avant-garde, visitors to Madrid will find thousand of excuses to go shopping.

A full day is required to get the most out of the Madrid shopping experience, as the city’s shopping areas are very popular throughout the year with residents of Madrid and visitors alike. Whatever your fashion preferences, Madrid has something for everyone.

The centre is considered to be the artistic and historic heart of Madrid. This area has been witness to many events in the life and history of Madrid. As you shop along calles Mayor, Arenal, Preciados, Carmen or Gran Vía, you will discover a variety of fashion stores (clothes, shoes and accessories) and some of the typical department stores. You can find a great outlet store in Las Rozas town, trust me, you will get crazy…

The area surrounding Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol and Plaza de Oriente, is full of small traditional stores, many of which have not changed in appearance in the last 100 years: pharmacies, cake shops, stores selling religious relics, haberdashers, antique book stores, hat shops or ceramic workshops.

Many of these establishments sell traditional Spanish articles such as fans, shawls, guitars or capes.

Hortaleza, Fuencarral and Triball are considered to be the most progressive and ultramodern shopping areas of the city, and in recent years have become point of reference for Spanish modernism. On them you can find the boutiques of young fashion designers, accessories, arts and crafts…

Lavapiés, the streets of this multicultural neighbourhood are home to traditional Madrid stores as well as many others that sell traditional goods from different countries, from food products to art and crafts.

Stores in Madrid are free to open at whatever time they choose but generally speaking, stores open between 9:30am and 2:00pm, and then again between 5:00pm and 8:30pm from Monday to Saturday. The major shopping centres do not close at lunchtime and stay open to 10pm from Monday to Saturday. Stores also open their doors on the first Sunday of each month, as well as other Sundays that are considered of high demand, as well as on some public holidays.

If you just want to move through the city center the best is to  use the tube, but if you are thinking in going further you will need to Rent a car in Madrid.as the taxi is quite expensive.

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Enjoy the spanish culture… visit Madrid!!

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

If you don’t have a clear idea of where to go or what to do in Madrid, it can be hard to enjoy the capital and largest city in Spain.  We searched for Madrid tourist information and we are ready to give you some reasons to visit it depending on your interests:

-          Especially for culture vultures: capital cities such as Madrid are really well-known by its cultural and artistic offer.   So, if you are a culture hunter, your big problem in Madrid with culture and arts can be to pick and choose what to do!   Besides a large permanent collection in important museums such as El Prado, Reina Sofia and Thyssen-Bornemisza, you can also enjoy a wide range of cultural options in other museums, cultural centres, galleries, theatres, cinemas, music venues or festivals.

-          If you’re just a trendy and love designs or just if you love food shopping in markets, Madrid is heaven for shopping lovers.  Because shopping is more than clothing.  Along Gran Via and around the Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol, in the downtown, you will find lot of shops filling every block.  But if you are looking for shopping options under one roof, the main city mall nowadays is La Vaguada, located in the northern of Madrid.   For exclusive boutiques we suggest you El Barrio de Salamanca, the place to go for haute couture (Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani…).  But for special bargains don’t miss El Rastro on Sunday morning, the main flea market in the city.

-          Madrid oozes history from Muslim and Medieval Madrid to modern.  The heart of this Spanish city is where most of the city’s historic sites are located and where tourists and groups of students gather in droves.

-          Live the nightlife in Madrid.  The great majority of people who visit this city or at least a big percentage regard its nightlife.   You have to take note Spanish schedule runs later than most.  You can easily eat dinner at 10 pm or later.  Then Madrid nightlife begins to jump when, for example, London pubs are nearly to close, and it can continue till the sunrise.

We think now you have some reasons to visit Madrid and find your perfect city break depending on your interests.

After all, if you want to go away and enjoy your getaway, Madrid is one of the best and cheap options in Europe.  You can easily find lot of cheap flights from the main European cities to Madrid.  And on arrival to this city, probably one of the best communicated in Spain, you will find lot of ways to get around in and from the city.

Obviously Rentspain.com suggests you rent your car as the best way to move on your journey discovering Spain.   Check our Madrid rental prices and compare it to find the best Madrid car hire deal according to your needs.   Don’t waste your time, trust in us and save money!!

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