Pauline Frommer discusses her recent trip to Spain with Jason Cochran, Editor in Chief of Frommers.com

Takeaways:

• In this episode, we discuss the cosmopolitan nature of Madrid, highlighting its expansive avenues, walkability, top restaurants and extraordinary museums.
• The culinary experiences in Madrid are diverse, ranging from molecular gastronomy to traditional tapas, showcasing the city's rich gastronomic culture.
• Our exploration of Madrid includes visits to renowned museums, where masterpieces from artists like Bosch and Goya captivate the imagination.
• The flamenco show at Corral de la Moreria stands out as a cultural highlight, demonstrating the city's historical significance in the flamenco tradition and its artistic vibrancy.
• A side trip to Toledo is the perfect add on to an adventure in Madrid, as it's a very different city, with extraordinary religious heritage, and only 30 minutes away by train

Companies and sights mentioned in this episode:

• Frommers.com
• Melt the band
• DSTAgE Restaurant
• Doppelganger Bar
• Coral de la Moreria
• Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum
• El Prado
• Primatial Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in Toledo

Foreigner Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer, and I have been traveling recently, as you heard.

On the last show, I was following my daughter's rock band around.

I think on that show I discussed Utrecht in the Netherlands and Berlin.

I also got to go to Paris, but so briefly, I don't know if it's worth discussing.

We'll see.

We'll see.

And Madrid.

They weren't playing in Madrid.

I just wanted to go to Madrid and so I thought I'd go.

So, once again, I have Jason Cochran here on the line.

He is the editor in chief of fromers.com he's extraordinarily well traveled.

Hey, Jason.

Welcome back to the Fromer Travel Show.

Hi, Pauline.

And I see you did the great classic add a city onto a trip that you're already taking just to squeeze in a little more travel.

I approve.

Why not?

I was already in Europe.

I thought I could fly back, you know, but it felt close to the weekend by that point, and I thought, what the hell, I'll just.

I think it's a great tactic that more of us should use.

Just take an extra day or so.

You're going to learn something brand new and you can always go back if you want to see more of it.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I have friends in Madrid who I wanted to see, so I thought, what the heck, why not?

Have you been to Madrid, Jason?

I love Madrid.

Madrid.

I, you know, people look at me funny, but if you're talking about Spain, I'd rather go to Madrid than Barcelona.

I find.

I find it a fascinating, cosmopolitan, but yet bohemian city.

I think the architecture is gorgeous.

It reminds you of like a, you know, an ignored version of Paris.

Sometimes, to me, the way the city looks and feels when you walk around it with the art and the beautiful architecture.

I just dig Madrid.

It's cosmopolitan and all the approachable ways that I love a European city to be.

Well, I was struck this time by how incredibly wide the avenues are.

There's just this feeling of expansive space there.

It's almost like the Montana of European cities.

You can actually see the sky in many places.

Of course, there are also side streets which are labyrinthine and so small you can't believe there are cars driving through them.

But there are, and you have to keep.

Keep an eye out for them.

Yeah, it's a.

It's a fabulous city.

So much fun to visit.

They have fun in Madrid, too, the way they have fun in Barcelona.

Oh, absolutely.

I ate most nights at 10pm and I was often one of the well.

That'S what I want to hear about then.

The food?

Yes, the food.

Well, I did a little bit of planning in advance.

I had my very first molecular gastronomy meal in Spain.

I think it actually was in Barcelona.

This was many years ago.

And I remember thinking, this is like a magic show.

This is so crazy.

And so I went to a place called D Stage, my very first night there, which was all molecular gastronomy, or just kind of groovy cooking, maybe conceptual things, food.

And the very first dish that they placed in front of me, the waiter went into the soliloquy about how in Spain, they so love the saints that when they come to a saint's statue, they kiss it.

And their prayer is one and the same as the kissing of the stone.

And so on my plate, there was a big pair of lips on a lid on the plate.

And I thought, oh, okay, nice story.

And I started to lift the thing off so I could eat what was inside it.

He said, no, no, you're supposed to kiss the plate.

So I thought, okay.

So I put my lips onto the lips of the COVID of the plate, and it was sticky, and it was this kind of sweet tasting thing.

And so I licked the.

The top of the thing.

It was strange.

It felt like a fetish or something.

Yeah.

Sounding more and more like a sorority rush ritual.

Yeah, it was a little odd.

And then I had the thing inside it, and a lot of the dishes were like that.

Like, they served me this dish that looked like it was egg yolk and that it had these thin slices of what I assumed were egg white on top of, and it was very delicious.

It turned out that the egg white was squid.

Very, very thinly sliced.

So, you know, I was tricked.

They didn't tell me till afterwards that I had eaten squid.

It's very interesting.

Like, they delight in tricking you so much, they don't tell you until after you've consumed it.

Well, sometimes they tell you before, Sometimes every.

Every different dish.

And there were 18 of them.

Had to be an experience.

So after this meal, were you full?

18 little dishes.

Right.

Like amusbouch.

18 bites.

Yeah, I was full.

I didn't think it was that delicious.

Except for the eggs.

The eggs were really great.

But other than the squiddy eggs.

The squiddy eggs I loved.

But other than that, it felt more like a brain exercise than a feast.

It really was more about the brain than the mouth.

I thought, yeah, you're supposed to be impressed with the prowess of the people in the kitchen, which sounds impressive.

That's probably the most.

How did you do that?

Is what you come away feeling.

Yeah.

And then the next night I went tapas hopping, which is always so much fun, where you go and you get a drink at a place and then you have just like a little bite there and then you go off to the next place.

And I went to a little.

I wish I should have written down the name of it, but it was one of these vermouth places, we know it as vermouth, where you have a glass of vermouth, which was really delicious.

I don't know why we don't do that here too.

You don't need to mix it in a cocktail, just slug it down.

Vermouth.

Vermouth and croquettes and jamon, which is ham and little plates.

And we ended up at one of the rare tapas places where you get free food for your drink.

It used to be that at all tapas places you just had to order a drink and you would get a side dish of food with it.

Nowadays at most places you have to pay for the food separately.

But this last place we paid, I think, €15 for three drinks.

And we had enough food in front of us to have had an entire meal.

I mean, it was really incredible.

Very basic stuff.

But, you know, if you know about those places, you could live in Madrid for far less money.

And then the next night, the interesting thing, in Madrid, they have these old markets, you know, the type of indoor covered markets where there are butchers and there are cheese shops and there are fruitarias where they sell fruit, but they're being taken over in the evenings, but these wonderful restaurants.

And so I was in this market structure that was kind of in a local's neighborhood, and I went to this Michelin starred restaurant called Doppelganger.

I don't know why it was an evil twin or what.

It was an evil twin too, but that was molecular gastronomy.

That actually tasted amazing.

I mean, my first dish, which was a bowl of steam, sea urchin and pumpkin soup with this incredible, like, sea foam on top of it.

And it was one of the most delicious things I've ever had.

And the meal ended.

They said, would you like electric candy?

Which I thought I was going to do an acid trip, but no.

Electric candy turned out to be this little square of white chocolate.

And they said, you have to put it in your mouth and bite down.

And I bit down and suddenly my whole mouth started to tingle and go numb.

And the waitress said, you're okay, don't worry, it has Szechuan chili oil and it will numb your whole mouth.

But if I hadn't known, I would have thought, oh my God, I'm having a stroke or something.

They really like to surprise you with the food.

Here, put this in your mouth.

We'll tell you what happened later.

Right?

But it is sophisticated.

I mean, when I said at the very top of our conversation that Madrid is cosmopolitan, this is what I mean, you know, it doesn't always stand on tradition, Madrid.

It's always looking for new things, new ways.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then on my last night, which really was the highlight of the trip, I ate and saw a flamenco show at Corral de la Moraria.

It is the oldest flamenco parlor club in the world.

Before then, there wasn't really, I guess, flamenco clubs where you ate and saw a show.

It's Michelin starred.

So the food was extraordinary.

The food was amazing.

For dessert, we had this walnut cream and they described it to us as.

It's this cream that's walnuts are put into and then a lot of air is blown into it and then it's flash frozen.

And so they said, eat it quickly because it will start to disappear.

And it really did start to disappear in front of me.

And it was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted.

Followed by this show.

Do you like flamenco?

It's okay to watch for a little bit.

I get a little bored watching dance.

I usually get bored watching dance too.

This was captivating.

There was something so foundational somehow about the movements and the emotions.

There were three singers, a guitarist and two dancers, a man and a woman.

And they seemed to be acting out these primordial urges and scenarios with one another.

I wish I could have understood the Spanish better, but it was thrilling and it lasted just long enough.

Just when I thought I was getting bored, it ended.

So it was really.

They only have the top artists there.

It was interesting.

I took a walking tour and the guide said, look, Madrid is the best.

It's the capital.

This is where the best museums are.

This is where the best flamenco is.

Even though Grenada and Cordoba are supposed to be the centers of flamenco, really, if you want to make it as a flamenco dancer, it's like coming to Broadway in New York City.

You gotta go.

That makes sense to Madrid.

The big smoke.

The big smoke.

And so these dancers and singers and the guitarist, it was really next level.

It just was absolutely extraordinary.

So that was.

You were all over the place.

How did you find getting around the city and the transportation?

You know, I bought a tourist card which gave me transportation options for four days, and I used it to come in from the airport.

And that's it.

Because Madrid, everywhere you go, is kind of in the center.

As a tourist, I just walked everywhere, so I totally wasted a lot of money.

And the weather was good, you know, you were there in November.

Was it cold?

It was cold.

It was pretty damn cold.

Yeah.

It was as cold as Berlin.

I couldn't believe it.

Apparently it was unusually cold while I was there.

But that was fine for walking, you know, it's a beautiful, beautiful city.

So.

So, yeah, so that's what I ate.

Which is somehow always the first thing I discuss.

Somehow.

But always lead with squiddy eggs.

Right.

And kissing.

Kissing flatware and kissing the flat.

Your game.

Anyway.

I can't believe you did that.

Well, what else could I have done?

You wouldn't have kissed me.

Not on the first date.

I can't kiss my meal on the first date.

Well, anyway.

And of course, I went to a bunch of museums.

I went to the Theissen Bora Mason, which I hope I'm.

I'm.

I think I'm slaughtering the pronunciation of that.

That was this private art collection that was left to the state, and it has incredible masterpieces.

But nothing beats the Prado.

Oh, yeah, the Prado.

I think the Prado may be one of the top three museums in the entire world.

I mean, they.

I talked about Bosch on the last show.

They have the Garden of Earthly Delights.

I think I stood in front of that painting for a full 20 minutes.

I took the Prado's tour, which was expensive, but excellent.

They had guides, our guide, at least, who really knew what she was doing.

I mean, she explained if you've ever seen the Garden of Earthly Delights in the center panel, it's a big orgy.

Basically, everybody is getting on, and they all are.

They all have fruits kind of coming off their heads, or they're nibbling on them, or they're between their legs.

And that's because, according to our guide, and I'm sure this is true, in the Bible, apples are never mentioned.

It's just the forbidden fruit, that apples.

It could have been a fig.

Right.

Or a date.

Right.

And so Bosch puts every fruit in this orgy.

That's why, you know, there are strawberries, there are grapes.

There are.

And it's.

And apparently Bosch, when he was young, there was a terrible fire in his neighborhood.

And so there's a fire scene in the hell part of it.

It's a triptych.

So the third panel is fiery hell, and it was based on the fire that he saw, which is something I never, never knew.

And then the Goya is there.

Goya was the official portraitist of the royal family towards the end of his life, but in reality, he was a Republican.

He didn't believe in the monarchy and so he gave them no favors.

There's this portrait of the queen who I believe had 20 pregnancies.

And back in those days, that meant that all the calcium was leached from her body and.

And she lost all her teeth.

And so you can see that her jaw looks different because she had no teeth between her gums, you know, so it jaws farther up and you see it immediately when it's pointed out to you.

And then later in his life, Goya went mad, basically.

He became fully deaf, could not communicate.

He lived, I think, till into his 70s, which in those days was very old.

And.

And they have the black paintings that he did at the very end of his life that he drew on the walls of his house.

Getting them off and into the museum is another fascinating story, but they're so dark.

And to see how he went from painting the royal family to then painting the terrible war that took place.

Napoleon sent in mercenaries to kill people.

And he thought that Napoleon, coming out of the French Revolution, was going to support Spain's dreams of being a republic.

And so initially he supported Napoleon, but then Napoleon just sent in these mercenaries who slaughtered everyone in sight.

And so he has these gruesome paintings of that.

And then eventually you see how his life and learning about his life drove him towards madness.

And these crazy, crazy dark black and gray pictures of.

There's one of the king of the gods.

There was a prophecy that his children would take over for him, and so he decided to eat them all.

And so there's a GR gastly picture of Saturn eating his son, blood dripping.

But they didn't tell him it was his son until after he'd eaten it, just like at the restaurants he went to.

No, he knew he missed one son, and so that's how the gods came to be.

But so, yeah, Madrid was extraordinary.

And then I decided to go for my very last day to Toledo.

Toledo is the town that you may know from the paintings of El Greco.

It's this beautiful medieval town perched on a hill.

It was founded by.

By the Moors because it was so easy to defend, because it was the top of a hill.

It's all of these winding ancient streets with.

You know, it's funny, my daughters always tease me because they think I can't pass a church without going in.

But you see really interesting things in churches.

And the cathedral there, maybe one of the most extraordinary cathedrals I've ever seen anywhere.

Just the architecture.

There's crypts.

There's a crypt with an awful.

Oh, my God.

Skeleton of saint.

I think it's Saint Ursula, and she's kind of dressed in what looks like a wedding dress, and it's so gruesome.

And then they have a museum with paintings by El Greco and other masters and.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun, just walking.

Is it easy to get to from Madrid?

It's only about 25 minutes on the train.

Oddly, there's only one train an hour.

But Madrid was always.

Maybe not fishing, because it's not near.

It was a small village.

And then Toledo was always the religious center of Spain, and so just the extraordinary churches.

Interestingly, on my walking tour of Madrid, they were talking about Toledo.

Basically, the king moved the capital to Madrid because he wanted to get away from the Roman Catholic Church and he wanted to not have their influence on his politics.

And so for almost 200 years, Madrid had no archbishop.

And that was a huge problem because you couldn't get married without an archbishop.

And this was the time of the Inquisition.

And according to our guide, I'd never heard the Inquisition described this way.

He talked about how corrupt the Inquisition was.

A lot of it was about bribes and money, and people would report their neighbors for living in sin just to get the money from the Catholic Church for reporting them.

Did you know that went on?

Yeah, of course.

And, you know, that's very common, these.

These movements throughout history.

In the Salem witch trials in the US a lot of the people who were accused owned their own land, and then their land was taken after they were killed or tried.

So you'll find that thread happening in very, very.

Yeah, women, mostly.

You'll find this thread happens whenever these great social upheavals happen.

There's always a force in there that tries to take advantage of it.

Right.

And in Madrid, there were a lot of people living in sin, because back in those days, would take you three days to walk to Toledo, which was the nearest place you could get married, and then, you know, it take you another three days to walk back.

And who can give up a whole week?

Nobody could.

So very Very interesting city.

Very interesting region.

I was sorry to leave.

Yeah, you'll want to go back too.

Like I was saying, I think it's a great city.

It's a great city.

And one other thing, it's so different too.

There's so much you can see now.

Next time you'll take the metro and see even more.

I would have seen the palace too.

They have one of the largest, if not the largest palace in Europe.

3,000 rooms.

It had been smaller, but there was a quote unquote fire one day, which was pretty clearly intentionally set so that they could build the palace.

But it was closed while I was there.

One travel tip I did learn, I had to go from Utrecht to Paris.

I was only in Paris for one night, briefly, to see my daughter's band Melt perform.

And I kept looking at Google, I kept looking@rometorio.com and they would tell me the only way to get there by train from Utrecht was to change trains twice and go first here and then to Rotterdam.

And I knew logically that there had to be direct trains from Utrecht to Rotterdam.

And so when I just searched for that and then added on the train from Rotterdam to Paris, it was only one change of cities rather than two.

And so I think that happens a lot.

I think with AI Especially, you just have to start thinking logically.

If what they're telling you in terms of your travel planning doesn't make sense, just judge it out for yourself.

Don't you agree?

Yeah.

I would have gone back to Amsterdam from Utrecht because it's not very far away.

20 minutes, and I would know there'd be a direct train to Paris from Amsterdam.

Well, but it's also in the wrong direction, so it would have added more time on.

So I knew that Rotterdam was in the right direction.

But there's two solutions to that problem that it sounds like these AI sites didn't give you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah.

What a trip.

I'm sorry to be home, but, you know, it was a lovely time.

It really was.

The lovely thing about trips that you don't want to leave is they just make you want to go again later.

They give you a reason to keep on living.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much, Jason, for talking this through with me.

Sure.

And that is it for this week's show.

I thank you so much for listening.

And to those who are traveling, may I wish you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the table, lazy apple afternoons in your sweatpants, watching cable.

Well, it feels so far away.

All.

The Channels seem the same.

Trying to remember all the songs we like to play.

Cause those lazy afternoons don't come so frequently these days.

Oh, it's been so long And I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake oh, but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes?

I can't get you off of my mind.

Looking out the window where we spend so much of our time.

Cause I miss the way about.

But I guess you can't control those damn cards.

We're down, babe.

I know the both of us are happy when we're free.

But would it be so hard to find your freedom?

You and me?

Oh, it's been so long.

And I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the bow house on the lake.

But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it take.

And I.

I.

Hate the way taste taste?

But I love it all the same And I.

Hate the way it tastes.

But I love it all the same.

Sa.

So long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake.

But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes.

It's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you, you ever coming home?

When I see you with this sour candy don't want it any other way.

Oh, I just hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes.