When I reflect back on life in Madrid my memories come back to me in swirls of color – riding the metro to meet friends for tapas and cerveza, exploring the city on foot, working on this blog in cafes with writing buddies, and constantly plotting how to make each euro stretch – all … [Read more…]
In today’s Women Who Travel Solo, former expat Michelle Philippon returns to Spain for the first time to celebrate her 30th birthday and shares stories from Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.
If spending the year 2015 living in the rainforest of Costa Rica has taught me one thing about myself, it’s that I am a city girl at heart. (Though I can assure you the complete list of lessons I’ve learned in this jungle runs far and wide). Yes, my daily walks in the mountains under … [Read more…]
As my life has taken me away from the bustling streets of Madrid to the remote rainforest of Costa Rica, I’ve come to realize just what an amazing continent Europe is and how easy it is to explore by rail. 
During my last month in Madrid I discovered what would become one of my favorite places in the city – Parque Europa. I learned about this park, which contains replicas of 18 of Europe’s most iconic monuments, from my first and second grade students who visited on a field trip. They raved about it so … [Read more…]
A sea of red and yellow stretches as far as my eyes can see as throngs of Spaniards and aficiondos alike line the long sidewalks of Gran Vía, Madrid’s main thoroughfare. We quietly stand under the hot sun waving our plastic Spanish flags and wait for the newly crowned King Felipe VI to pass. The … [Read more…]
How quickly time passes. I can’t believe that in a month from today I’ll be leaving Madrid. That’s right, I only have one more month in Madrid! I’ve been in Spain a little more than nine months now teaching English. Some days it feels like so long ago and some days it seems like just … [Read more…]
It’s beginning to look a lot like the Christmas in Madrid. Well, actually, it began to look a lot like Christmas Dec.1 when the annual Christmas lights in Madrid were illuminated. Ornate lights depicting holiday packages, snow globes, winter scenes and city buildings hang over the wide avenues and strings of white lights fill the … [Read more…]
In the dim light of Restaurant Botín, owner Carlos González hands me a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I turn to the final page and read. “We lunched upstairs at Botín’s,” he wrote. “It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja … [Read more…]
I live on Calle Fuencarral, a street in the center of Madrid, in a shared flat located between Michael Kors and a shoe shop, in room with a balcony that overlooks the street. When I first came to the city, I had no idea that finding housing in Madrid would prove to be such a … [Read more…]