Hola Madrid

Maje jacket
H&M jeans
Dior pumps
Celine handbag
Celine sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o)
Location: Calle del Duque de Rivas – Madrid, Spain

We planned a trip to Madrid, Valencia and Toledo for our tenth wedding anniversary. At least, we imagined planning it. When we were on our whirlwind weekend trip to Chicago, we mapped out what the holiday might look like – but that trip was in 2020. And so was our tenth wedding anniversary. Chicago was the only place we travelled that year. Our actual anniversary celebration was confined to our apartment. (And we were lucky. We didn’t have any plans made that we were forced to cancel. Many people, especially frequent travellers, can’t say that.)

We were able to start travelling again in late 2021. We left the country the instant we could, when all kinds of precautions were still required. (The process of applying for a French vaccination passport was fraught with anxiety. And yet still worth it.) We have no regrets. But at that point, after eighteen months shut away in Winnipeg, getting back to Paris was the priority. And then, caught up in the rush of being able to see the world again, we continued to tick former favourite destinations off our travel wishlist. There was a return to Rome and Florence, another to Athens and Hydra. We’d missed so much, and we wanted to make up for lost time. Madrid was still on that list, of course – but it’s hard to know what you might be missing when you’ve never experienced a place.

Finally, this spring, the stars aligned. Flight prices to Madrid, which are invariably much higher than flight prices to Barcelona, came down to a (somewhat) reasonable level, while the cost of visiting other places on our wishlist continued to creep upwards. (It now costs double what it did in spring 2022 to fly from Winnipeg to Rome.) This must be it, we decided. It was time to take our Spanish adventure… albeit three years late.

The trip we planned was not, ultimately, exactly the trip we’d first envisioned in 2020. We did visit Valencia, but chose to return to Barcelona instead of taking a day trip to Toledo. (No regrets – Barcelona is a wonderfully effortless place to visit, seemingly always sunny and relaxed, the perfect place to just wander while sipping a cup of fresh fruit juice through a straw.) But it was still a trip we’d waited years for, a fact we felt strongly when we finally landed on Spanish soil.

Madrid was new for us, and on our first full day in the city, when we snapped these photos, we weren’t yet sure what to make of it. I’d already spoken more Spanish than I have in the past twenty years (when I stopped studying it in third year university.) It turned out to be surprisingly difficult not to just pop in a French word wherever a Spanish one didn’t immediately come to mind. Everyone was friendly, but seemed surprised to see us – as tourists from outside of Spain, we were a kind of curio. And there was clearly a way of doing things, a specific manner of behaving in social situations that we couldn’t exactly grasp – but were so far away from that anyone thought to correct us. We just seemed… a bit odd. We could tell.

The city grew on us, as our stay progressed. But on this early day, we wandered, taking it all in, wondering how it was possible that the legacy of fascism, which is now fifty years in the past, could still touch everything. We never did find an answer. But we adapted to what that means, how that history still marks Madrid, making it the city it is. It’s a beautiful place, from the right angles. Full of elegant brown doors, the kind I love best. This one was right across the street from our apartment. There are many others that will pop up in the background of snapshots as I share the rest of this trip.

Madrid isn’t what you would expect from a European capital. It’s Barcelona that competes with Paris, London and Rome. Madrid is a big city, but an insular, almost isolated one. Which makes it a perfect place to really feel like you’re far from the familiar, which is increasingly rare in our globalised reality. It was strange, at times, and wonderful at others. But it never once felt like home, which is what we loved best about it. We were on a real adventure, discovering the unknown.

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