Mad about Madrid

If you live in North Texas and would like a quick and easy European getaway, it's hard to beat Madrid. AA has convenient non-stop flights from DFW. The new Exprés Aeropuerto bus service takes you from MAD Terminal 4 to central Madrid for €2 a person. The major sights are in a compact central zone. The great museums are within a five or ten minute walk of each other and a couple of them are free every evening. Madrid is clean and pretty, with an energy that is inviting but never intimidating. In short, DFW -> MAD is so easy that we've already done it twice and are looking forward to doing it again.

Walking around a city is one of my favorite entertainments and Madrid is eminently strollable. We walked from Plaza de Cibeles up the Gran Via all the way to Plaza de España, awed by the architecture. We wandered along the new river walk west of the Royal Palace. We lingered in gathering places like Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, and Plaza Santa Ana. We walked up and down Paseo del Prado and spent delightful hours in Parque del Buen Retiro.

We spent an interesting fifteen minutes watching a trio of pickpockets, three young women in their 20s, at work in Plaza de Cibeles. Laughing and talking, they blended into the crowds crossing the street or gathering at bus stops, looking for an open purse or pocket to snatch from. They finally noticed our eyeing them and eyed us back as they left for new hunting grounds.

Coming out of the city cultural center, I noticed a middle-aged couple fussing at each other. The woman was carrying an infant swaddled in blankets, which I thought a bit odd considering her age. What was even odder was that I looked in at the child as she was cooing to it and saw that it was, in fact, a miniature dachshund, lying on its back staring right back at her.

While we love coming to Madrid, I am still perplexed by the food. Tapas bars are crowded and noisy and confusing and don't appeal to me. Restaurant meals are expensive, with main dishes easily costing €20 and up. I don't understand a lot of the terminology on the menus and translation to English doesn't help. I need to figure out the best way to eat here, or better yet, find someone to take us along and show us the way.

I've had a lazy camera this trip and hardly took any snaps. Here's a few of them on Flickr. And here's a snap of me doing what I do best:

Mileage Run to Madrid

A frequent flyer will sometimes do a "mileage run" to get the miles necessary to get or maintain status with an airline. When the airline sweetens the deal by offering bonuses, the mileage runs multiply. Various offers from American Airlines, for example, have led to a rash of AAdvantage members booking flights from Chicago (ORD) or Dallas (DFW) to Los Angeles (LAX) or San Francisco (SFO). To earn those all-important BIS (butt in seat) miles, some fanatics have gone so far as to book daily round trips between ORD and LAX for five or ten days in a row: fly ORD -> LAX in the early morning, get off the plane but stay in the terminal then board the next flight back to ORD, get a few hours sleep, and start all over again the next day.

I like having status with AA, but I'm not nearly so driven as that. Make me a reasonable offer, though, and I'll gladly plan a trip.

Right after AA announced it was entering bankruptcy, they also decided to offer double elite qualifying miles on all flights through the end of January. It's been a month since we got back from Italy, so we took this as a clear sign that it was time to travel again.

Bueno, entonces, we're off today to Madrid for five nights. The convenient flights are non-stop from DFW to MAD, it's easy to get into the city from Barajas airport, and we found a good deal on a hotel right across the street from the Prado.

I'll be taking snaps and writing more, of course, but until then here's my Flickr photos from our trip to Madrid in March 2010.