Results tagged “Spain” from Intelligent Travel Blog

I arrived in Madrid a few weeks ago with only a handful of hours on a Saturday to show my fiancé around town, so I wanted a way to pack in as much culture as we could, and if possible, do it on the cheap. Enter my colleague Meg Weaver's excellent Free City Guide to Madrid, where I found a slew of cost-efficient ways to wander the city. With her list and a few of our own discoveries along the way, we were able to make our limited stay a memorable one, and save a few euros in the process.

Our first stop was the CaixaForum Madrid gallery, a former electric power station that's now a funky art space situated along the Paseo del Prado, tucked among some of the city's best museums. We wandered the current exhibit, took a break at the thoroughly modern cafe upstairs, then marveled at the living wall of plant life that's overtaken the exterior of the building next door. The admission is always free, so it should certainly join the must-see list for those visiting the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Museo del Prado, which is where we were headed next.

Admission is free for visitors to the Reina Sofia after 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and until 2:30 p.m. on Sundays, so we ducked in there first, taking the very-cool elevators up to see Picasso's Guérnica, which is always captivating. We spent awhile wandering the halls of modern art before heading over to the historic stuff at the Prado, whose immense galleries filled with works by Goya, Reubens, and Velásques constituted an entire semester's worth of study for one of my college roommates when she studied abroad in the city. But we only had two hours, as the Prado offers free admission from 6 p.m to 8 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday (and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday). Thankfully, that was more than enough time to take in some of the museum's more famous works like Las Meninas and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid.

National Geographic Magazine Editorial Researcher Brad Scriber took a recent trip to Barcelona and filled us in on how he chose his trip soundtrack.

About the only time my music collection grows is when I travel. Now, I'd love to say that's because I spend my vacation nights in low-lit, smoky clubs discovering emerging talent in cities across the globe. Nope, I just hit the web shortly before I head to the airport.

A child of the 1980s, part of my brain is still wired for making mix tapes, those painstakingly crafted personal soundtracks of years gone by. Twenty years later, instead of spending hours combing through a ransacked pile of cassettes, CDs, and liner notes, I rummage through digital inventories with my keyboard.

In addition to the authentic local samplings that experts on world music can provide, I like a mix that includes a few puns, allusions, or inside jokes. The beauty of search engines on iTunes or Rhapsody is that wordplay can lead to new music and a great vacation playlist -- just plug in some destination related language and pick through the results.

Take the selections from my recent trip to Barcelona, for example:

There are some things that are on everyone's life list. Running with the bulls in Pamplona may be on your list, but it sure ain't on mine. I'm a slow traveler, so running through any city isn't my idea of a good time, and the threat of being gored doesn't make it any more enticing. Factor in that last week saw the terrible death of a 27-year-old runner (the first such death since 2003), and the severe injury of two other participants, and it secures my status on the sideline for good.

Which is why I was glad to see this article by Lionel Beehner in the New York Times this weekend highlighting Pamplona's softer, slower side. The city gained international fame in Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, The Sun Also Rises, and according to Beehner, little has changed.

First-timers can spend hours getting happily lost in the Old Quarter's maze of narrow canyonlike alleyways, hopping from bar to bar and sampling exotic examples of the small-plate combinations of colorful finger food locally called pinchos -- like pigeons stuffed with truffles and foie gras -- and filling up on a favorite local libation, the tangy red liqueur called pacharán.

Sounds tasty. Read the full story for more tips on the city. It may be less of an adrenaline rush, but I think I prefer it that way.

[The New York Times]

Have you been to Pamplona for the running of the bulls... or otherwise? What's your take?

Photo: Lola Akinmade

Madrid recently kicked off its 24th annual Veranos de la Villa (Summers in the City), 60 days of music, dance, theater, flamenco and much more.

The 1,166 events, held daily through August 23rd, include 65 concerts, 50 plays, myriad ballet performances, 200 films, and two circuses (!); many of which are free to attend.
 
Performers run the gamut from pop to classical, and represent Spain, America, Brazil, Germany, England. Among them are Sara Baras, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Cesária Évoria, Gilberto Gil, Carlos Saura, James Taylor, Lou Reed, Kool & the Gang, Seal, and the Opera Ballet of Munich.
   
Venues include the 16th-century Plaza Mayor, the city's gardens, and the 4th-century BC Egyptian Templo de Debod (Temple of Debod). There'll even be open-air screenings of top movie hits such as Ché, Gran Torino, Slum Dog Millionaire, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Looking for more free things to do in Madrid? Check out Traveler's guide to Free Things to Do year-round in Madrid.

Hola, city-lovers! Today we're heading to Seville, Spain, where Shawn Hennessey shares the best the city has to offer.

Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you're still waiting for us to feature yours, fear not! We're going to keep posting as long as we keep getting them (please include photos and links!).

Seville, Spain is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is out for tapas.

When I crave pringá I always go Bodeguita Romero.

To escape the HEAT in summer I head for the Cádiz coast (Costa de la Luz).

If I want to feel alive I go out in the streets. Nobody does street life quite like Sevillians.

For complete quiet, I can hide away at the Cartuja Monastery.

If you come to my city, get your picture taken with the Giralda Tower behind you; best location is on the Doña Maria rooftop terrace.

If you have to order one thing off the menu from Modesto it has to be the "fritura". 

El Corte Inglés is my one-stop shop for just about everything.

With the beads and revelry of Mardi Gras behind us and in the throes of the Lent season, it's time to look forward to Semana Santa (Holy Week), a elaborate commemoration of the last week of Christ's life. Though I'm not a religious soul, I fell into marking Semana Santa while studying abroad in Seville, Spain.

My initiation to the reams of tradition associated with Semana Santa started our very first day in sticky Seville when my classmate asked our Spanish lit teacher why Ku Klux Klan lollipops were for sale in shops throughout the city. She gasped and launched into an explanation of Semana Santa and the Nazarenos (Nazarenes), members of local churches' cofradías (brotherhoods) who wear capirotes (peaked hats similar to those of the infamous Klan) while accompanying their Baroque wooden sculptures of Christ and the Virgin throughout the city.

Semana Santa has been celebrated in Seville in pretty much its current form since the 16th century. Over 50,000 cofradía members don traditional robes and solemnly traverse the city in over 116 pasos (passes) from Palm Sunday to Easter morning. A capella saetas (sad songs) accompany some processions, brass bands others, while some remain silent. Some pasos occur during the day while others are candlelit and border on spooky at night. During Semana Santa, the sweet smell of azahares (orange blossoms) muddled with incense and loads of candle wax permeates the city.

After the jump, get some tips on how to get the most out of Semana Santa if you're lucky enough to experience it this year, April 5 to 12.

The question isn't whether or not to travel in this economy, it's how to travel smart and get the most value out of your trip. Hotel Central editor Susan O'Keefe begins a series of posts that will feature affordable lodgings that don't break the bank, but are also worthwhile for their location, amenities, and unique character--real gems you should know about. Along with great hotels, she'll share strategies, deals, and insider tips on the destinations. And we encourage you to share your own lodging finds and recommendations for things to do in the city featured. 

Madrid's Prado Museum has long been home to a wide range of artistic masterpieces and is a must-see for anyone who happens to find themselves in its vicinity. When I studied in Madrid, I visited the Prado on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis! But now you don't have to travel to Spain to appreciate the museum's most famous paintings. The Independent reports on how the Prado has teamed up with Google Earth to create a project that allows users to zoom in on select masterpieces that have been photographed section by section in "mega high resolution" then stitched together digitally. Though this viewing process is hardly as electrifying as looking at the paintings in person, the high resolution of the images allows people to zero in on the most intricate details, which is impossible to do when faced with the paintings in real life.

"It's a unique vision. In the museum we cannot get this close to a painting; if we did we'd need a three-metre-high ladder to get these views," says Google Spain's Clara Ribera.

Photographer: Manuel Atienzar, Albacete, Spain.

Getting the Shot: This photo was taken on a road near Jorquera, a pretty town in Albacete, Spain.

The Details: I was traveling in my car when I saw an old man on his donkey carrying some persimmons (a charming, rare and anachronistic scene in the present-day Spain). We passed each other on the way, and I quickly stopped the car, grabbed my camera, and shot...just to capture this funny decisive moment with the man on the slow donkey, looking at the traffic poster, which read: "caution, sliding ice sheets."

The Camera: Nikon D70 and a Sigma 70-300 lens

We like this photo because it reminds us of a peaceful, simpler life.  Think your photo should be a Global Eye? Join our Flickr pool.

Photo: Manuel Atienzar