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Our 1-bedroom in Madrid is small, but it's really functional given its city center location.
The staircase in the Madrid hotel is a spiral one, and it can feel quite dizzying if you walk up a few floors. They really know how to make the most out of limited space in the city. The elevators in both cities/hotels are pretty tight too, each fitting about 5-6 people at max.
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I thought about renting a car for a day or two and driving around a bit. When I sat in the taxi from the airport to the hotel, I instantly gave up the idea while amazed by the driving skills of their drivers navigating through extremely crammed lanes pretty much everywhere. It certainly feels like they make a bike lane in New York City into a normal motor vehicle lane throughout the city.
Then when we got to walk around, we were constantly impressed by their use of space on the road, for both motor vehicles and other public services (garbage bins, sanitation trucks, etc.).
And they keep everything tidy and clean. As a New Yorker, you just cannot help being jaw-droppingly amazed by their effortless way of keeping everywhere nice and neat.
Also interesting in Barcelona, most city blocks are a square shape. And most likely the intersections are boxed in by triangular corner spaces where taxis and other public-use vehicles can temporarily park or mind their business without blocking traffic in any direction.
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Again, no expert here. I've taken subway in China, several U.S. cities and now in Spain. Any subway platform I plunge into, at least I'd smell the stuffiness, and human sweat most of the time, if not the Big Apple signature stinkiness. But here you smell absolutely nothing. And I also stopped a couple of times to admire the squeaky clean glass walls encasing the subway staff offices, which looks so enticing that I’d want to work there.
Yes, the platforms and waiting corridors are a bit crammed. But the tidiness of all subway spaces just inspire a sense of calm and safe. (Of course, as parents we always keep a leash on kiddos while snaking through crowds in and out of trains.)
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Everywhere we go, we feel the warmth of people. They are eager and willing to help. Language is, indeed, an issue.But I’d say it’s more about us who might need to learn Spanish seriously than them having to speak decent English to accommodate us. Now we got another goal for the next few years.
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While passing by a few walled blocks, we could hear the giggles and cackles of kids from inside. When we thought about it, we realized that we almost never saw, from outside through fences, kids playing in schools or playgrounds through the cities. It must be, I thought, for the kids’ privacy and safety. They can play and run around without worry about exhaust gasses or traffic noises or privy eyes.
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We love the Corbina fish. Cooked it twice, cleaned right off the ice bed out of the supermarket. Every time we finished off everything.
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Going around the two cities to hit various tourist spots, sometimes up the hill, we almost never saw much of a concrete jungle typical of a Western city. When we thought about it, we theorized that maybe they purposefully designed it that way so everyone's block of buildings (mostly 6-7 floors) can get plenty of sunshine around the year. What a thoughtful way of urban planning.
I am a big fan of sunshine for all.
What traveling families should and shouldn’t do:
Do’s
- Get tech/phone/data plan sorted out well before the trip (sign up for a Google Voice number, if you haven’t already; scroll to end for more details)
- Cook some local seafood/foods (our new favorite fish is Corbina)
- Get a subway multi-trip ticket for the whole family (the 8-ride package works out really well for four of us for a round trip to most places, which include a transfer to subway or bus or tram within an hour. We paid €2.65/person for a bus ride on the spot while a 8-ride ticket/reload costs just €11.50.)
- Try to get an apartment with a kitchen, preferably with a decent stove and cookware (our Barcelona stay was much better with lots of home-made meals that are both much more healthy and less expensive than eating out (costing less than €20/meal with fish, shrimp and loads of greens).
Don’ts
- Avoid overplanning for kids (they can be flaky and get tired easily, or they just want to go back to hug a screen.)
- Don’t expect most hotels to store luggages for you after check-out and before heading to airport; we had to use a temporary storage service recommended by our hotel in Barcelona (check if your hotel has concierge post check-out!)
- Don’t rely too much on ChatGPT or hotel staff, who may not always provide the most up-to-date intelligence on tourist sites
- Avoid arriving early in the morning local time, which will most likely end up with all of you floating around at the hotel waiting for a room to be ready, exhausted and potentially ruining the rest of the day, and night, and possibly a couple of days with jetlag-disrupted sleeping schedule
Tech/phone/data setup
We haven’t traveled together for a while. And Europe is a first for us as a group. Fortunately I have two outlet adapters sitting in closet at home for years. And it is a must-have. One of the few things that I have to thank myself for not tossing out for all these years.
Another must is the phone, isn’t it? Check your plan about all the features for traveling overseas. I have 5GB of high-speed data roaming every month. And I know that if I use it like willy nilly like usual, it wouldn’t last the whole week when we were there. So I got help from customer service to guide me through a couple of settings I needed to change to save on my data, for emergencies.
- Turn off live voicemail
- Turn off non-essential apps draining on cellular data (before and after screenshots below)
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For the most part, I didn’t need to make a phone call, just as I had expected. But I had something in the bags that is always a backup in case I need to make a voice call. I knew well before the trip that if I would make/receive a voice call in Spain, it would cost 25c/min. And I did need to make a call. I used my Google Voice number to call Iberia Airlines to double check on why my younger son didn’t have an assigned seat and boarding pass when I tried to check in four of us online. (I tried a couple of times back and forth on Iberia Airlines web site and their chatbot but couldn’t find a sure answer.) On the call, I was told that we needed to check in at the airline counter for the younger child. It costed 1c/min with Google Voice vs 25c. (Don’t get $10 credit though, which was what I got a couple of years ago and I am not sure I can spend it all in the next 10 years; maybe get $2 or something.)