My first trip to Europe was to Madrid, with Sra. Young's eleventh grade Spanish class. And I fell in love with travel when I saw the Plaza Mayor, the most beautiful place I'd ever seen (with admittedly only things like the Amish country and Catskill Game Farm as points of comparison.) But for the next couple of decades, Madrid's Plaza Mayor retained its special place in my heart, so it was all but inevitable that it would come crashing down off its pedestal on this visit. It's not like it got uglier, I've just seen alot more and become a lot more jaded. It's still a very nice square, although not as sensorily overwhelming as the Grand Place in Brussels, for example. It's fairly staid and symmetric, and at least this morning, very peaceful as well.



Completed in 1620, it was designed as Madrid's outdoor theatre, with royalty and other onlookers observing events in the square from the hundreds of balconies covering all four sides of the square. The trials of the Inquisition and the burning of heretics took place here, as did the crowning of kings. It was also used for general entertainment, such as bullfights and plays.



I also remembered from my earlier trip that there are lots of cavernous bars under the square, and in particular we hung out at one bar that looked like a series of caves, with Flintstones cartoons on them. And I remember drinking sangria there, which seems pretty progressive for an eleventh grade field trip.