Distance: 2 miles
Date: Saturday 16th May 2009
Weather Conditions: Warm and Sunny, Clear Skies
Temperature: 25-28 C
Ordnance Survey Map: Not Applicable
Guidebook: Madrid (Eyewitness Travel Guides) Dorling Kindersley Press
Critique:
This was one of three guided walks contained in the guidebook. To start with, the instructions on how to find the beginning of the walk were very difficult to follow and I actually spent a long time walking around trying to find the beginning of the walk and this ended up adding probably another couple of miles to the walk before I even started! This was partly due to the fact that the mapping was not detailed enough, with many of the side streets not even appearing on the map, let alone being named.
The walk itself was relatively simple to follow once I found the beginning, but it did appear to be somewhat out of date. On reaching what should have been the section of the city wall which is supposed to be Moorish, I just found a lot of very high fencing and scaffolding and signs that the whole site is being redeveloped. I just hope that the redevelopment protects the section of the city wall.
Almudena Cathedral is interesting - it was only finished a few years ago and it is clear that different materials have been used in different sections of the Cathedral, however, the guide makes no reference to this. Dare I say it, but I think the main entrance has actually been created using concrete blocks! This is a pity as overall it is an attractive building, but it looks like a hotchpotch of different materials that will age an look different and this may make the building start to look ugly.
Overall the walk was interesting, mainly due to the beautiful sites of the city, however, it does miss out key parts of Old Madrid such as Plaza Mayor & Puerto del Sol. It would have been very easy to have designed the walk to incorporate these these two key sites into the walk - a missed opportunity. My recommendation is that if you want to do this walk, start at Puerto del Sol and walk down Calle Mayor past Plaza Mayor which you can then look round. Then continue down Calle Mayor to rejoin the walk route along Calle Bailen...
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