The Cosmopolitan City of Madrid, Spain, Madrid, Spain

Last month, I took the family to Spain for a much needed vacation. For our nine-day stay, I wanted to explore different cities so I was thinking a few days in Madrid then off to possibly Barcelona or Seville - maybe Granada? I pored over travel blogs, Tripadvisor, LonelyPlanet, etc, trying to find a location for us until finally deciding to bypass Spain’s “usual suspects” of cities and explore the lesser-known area of Extremadura but more on that later.

Our first stop on our direct flight from Miami was Madrid, the capital city of the Kingdom of Spain and the largest municipality in Spain as a whole. It is the third-largest city in the European Union (EU) after London and Berlin and has been occupied since prehistoric times. Now, there’s a whole lot I liked about Madrid. A whole lot. But here’s the thing - it reminded me too much of New York City. And I grew up in New York City. There were times I felt I was walking around the West Village and other times I felt I was walking the Upper East Side and when we visited Retiro Park I felt like I was in Central Park. I mean, there’s plenty of terrific sculptures and fountains and statues of kings on horses (and the art museums were great) but the feeling that I was in my beloved NYC was hard to shake. And when I go overseas, I want to feel like I’m in a different place, that’s all. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).