Dec 25th, 2010 at 10:30AM: Merry Christmas from Madrid! Last year I covered some of the big Spanish Christmas traditions. This year I'd like to talk on a more personal level about how I and my in-laws celebrate. I'm married to a Spaniard. A Castilian to be precise, as regional identity is important here. Living in Madrid we have a very Castilian Christmas. My five-year-old son is pretty much Castilian too, although he's got ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
madrid posts
¡Feliz Navidad! More Christmas traditions from Spain
Dec 25th, 2010 at 10:30AM: Merry Christmas from Madrid! Last year I covered some of the big Spanish Christmas traditions. This year I'd like to talk on a more personal level about how I and my in-laws celebrate. I'm married to a Spaniard. A Castilian to be precise, as regional identity is important here. Living in Madrid we have a very Castilian Christmas. My five-year-old son is pretty much Castilian too, although he's got ...Favorite hiking spots near Madrid
Oct 29th, 2010 at 11:30AM: While most people come Madrid to sample the cuisine and see the art museums, Spain has much more to offer. Just an hour from the capital Madrid is the Sierra de Guadarrama, a chain of rough mountains wreathed in pine forest. While the strange rock formations of La Pedriza are perhaps more impressive, the Sierra de Guadarrama is the favorite getaway spot for madrileños because it's so easy ...Top five cities for taxi drivers (and the bottom end, too)
Aug 7th, 2010 at 5:00PM: When you step into a cab, you never know what you're going to find. The driver could be knowledgeable, helpful, pleasant and safe. Or, he could lead you into a fender-bender in minutes. It's a real roll of the dice, of course, though some cities' cabbies are certainly better than others – at least that's what hotels.com found.
In a study of world's taxi drivers, hotels.com found that ...Bargain hunting in Madrid's famous Rastro market
Jun 28th, 2010 at 3:30PM:
Shopping is a fun part of any trip, yet sometimes it's hard to find something truly unique, something that tells a bit about the culture but stands out from what 10,000 other tourists bought that year. Finding a good souvenir can be a real problem.
In Madrid, you'll never have that problem. At El Rastro, a giant open-air market that happens every Sunday from about 7am to 2:30pm, you can find ...Flying above Madrid in a cable car
Jun 26th, 2010 at 11:00AM: Madrid's museums and bars are a great place to spend a trip, but if you need a quick vacation from your vacation, check out the cable cars between two of Madrid's best parks. Known as the Teleférico, they go from Parque del Oeste to Casa De Campo, Madrid's largest park.
Built by a Swiss company and inaugerated in 1969, the system has two sets of cables, one set for going up and the other ...Giant photography exhibition opens in Madrid
Jun 13th, 2010 at 11:00AM: Madrid is known for its fine art museums displaying paintings by Spanish and Dutch Masters, but every year it also hosts one of the largest photography exhibitions in Europe.
PHotoEspaña, the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts of Madrid, has been going strong since 1998 and is a major event here, with exhibitions and workshops in dozens of museums and galleries around ...Madrid book fair opens today
May 28th, 2010 at 1:00PM: Madrid is one of the art capitals of the world, with amazing museums like the Reina Sofia and El Prado. What many visitors don't realize, however, is that it's a major hub for publishing too. Many of Spain's large and small presses are based here, and the countless bookshops are a bibliophile's delight.
Now book lovers are getting an extra treat, because today is the opening of the 69th annual ...Hiking around Madrid
May 25th, 2010 at 3:30PM: Madrid is a city of fine dining, fine wines, and fine-looking Spaniards. Because of this many visitors never get out and see the beautiful countryside of the surrounding Comunidad de Madrid. Another obstacle has been the lack of English-speaking hiking groups.
Luckily that's changed. A new group called Hiking in the Community of Madrid has been started by avid expat hikers Beau Macksoud and ...Fake pilots try to smuggle cocaine through airport
May 10th, 2010 at 2:30PM: Spanish police have arrested two men who tried to smuggle cocaine through Madrid's Barajas airport while dressed as pilots.
The two men boarded a flight from Bolivia and then changed into pilot uniforms. So far, so good, but once they landed in Madrid they joined the queue with the rest of the passengers. This struck the airport police as a wee bit suspicious. When asked for ID, they produced ...Airport security "allegedly" caught playing solitaire
Mar 31st, 2010 at 1:30PM: Once again, airport security is screwing up in public.
My wife, son, and I passed through Madrid's Barajas airport to fly to London yesterday. While waiting to board, I "allegedly" caught this police officer playing solitaire on the computer at the police checkpoint. She was so engrossed in her game that I was able to take four shots of her without her noticing.
Granted, nobody was boarding ...Five art exhibitions you must see this year
Jan 6th, 2010 at 10:00AM: Art lovers, take note, 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for exhibitions. Here are five of the best, but there are plenty more than these!
Tokyo
It's hard to beat Japanese art for sheer naturalistic beauty, and the Tokyo National Museum has an extensive collection of the best. See the work of one of the great Japanese masters in Hasegawa Tohaku: 400th Memorial Retrospective. This painter, ...The Ethiopian coffee ceremony
Dec 6th, 2009 at 10:00AM: We've all heard of the Japanese tea ceremony, but in Ethiopia they have an elaborate ceremony for that other great caffeinated beverage--coffee.
The Ethiopians discovered coffee, surely the greatest of their many cultural achievements, so it's not surprising they developed a ritual around it.
It was my wife's birthday last week so I took her to Madrid's one and only Ethiopian restaurant, ...London and Madrid to be linked by high-speed train
Nov 28th, 2009 at 10:00AM: Starting in 2012, travelers will be able to go from London to Madrid in eight hours thanks to a planned high-speed rail link. The service, organized by a French and Spanish consortium, will link Paris and Madrid. It's already quick and easy to get to Paris from London by taking the Eurostar. The trip lasts two hours and fifteen minutes. Travelers will then have to change stations before heading ...November is the month for arts in Madrid
Nov 8th, 2009 at 9:30AM: Two major festivals in Madrid this month are enough to keep any culture lover happy. The first and biggest is the Festival de Otoño, an annual extravaganza of theater, dance, music, and even a trio of circuses. The plays are all in Spanish, but dance and music are universal languages so you can still enjoy this festival even if you don't speak the the local lingo. The styles lean towards ...Explore five cities with a "bad rap"
Oct 29th, 2009 at 11:30AM: I grew up in Detroit. I love my city and will be the first tell anyone who thinks it's nothing but a boarded up hellhole just how wrong they are. But I know Detroit's bad rap comes not only from suburb-dwellers and business travelers who just breezed through, but also from the media that portrays it as a city with nothing to offer other than casinos and a punchline. But maybe the tide is changing. ...Man caught with dog inside his luggage
Oct 27th, 2009 at 2:30PM: I've traveled with my cats a few times while making some cross country moves. I hated cramming them into squat cages to fit them under my airplane seat and I really hated having to pay a few hundred dollars for their own "tickets" plus the vet checks and paperwork that certified them as healthy enough to fly. But never would I have considered trying to smuggle them on a flight inside my luggage. ...Top 10 places to have your pocket picked
Oct 4th, 2009 at 8:00AM:
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I always get a laugh when I see people walk the streets of Manhattan with backpacks worn on their fronts. Millions of people commute into and around the city every day, yet the outnumbered visitors take extreme measures to make sure their subway maps and recently ...Spain to become leader in high-speed trains
Sep 22nd, 2009 at 4:30PM: Spain is tipped to become the world's leader in high-speed trains next year, surpassing Japan and France for the most kilometers of track. With the rising costs and hassles of airfare, train travel has become more competitive. The high-speed train between Spain's two most important and visited cities, Madrid and Barcelona, takes just two-and-a-half hours. That's quicker than flying once you factor ...Madrid's Reina Sofia museum is now free every day
Sep 5th, 2009 at 2:30PM: Here's some good news for budget travelers in Madrid. Following the lead of the Museo Nacional del Prado (which has been offering free hours each day it is open since 2007), the Reina Sofia will now offer a few hours of free admission every day as well.
Previously, the museum had charged €6 admission, except for Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, when the fee was waived. But now it ...The World's ten happiest cities
Sep 5th, 2009 at 11:30AM: Disney World has been labeled "the Happiest Place on Earth", but one look at the tired parents, screaming kids, and extremely long lines will tell you that is just marketing spin. Ever wonder where the actual happiest place on Earth is? Then wonder no more, because Forbes, in conjunction with market researcher GfK Custom Research North America, has put together a list of the ten happiest cities on ...
