Un viaje de Vallecas

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 ( A trip to Vallecas ) I was on a quest for a stand mixer. 1  Madrid has Spanish equivalents to big-box stores, but they're waaay out in the suburbs, not within easy reach of those of us without cars. 2  However, some diligent searching revealed a couple of stores that were likely prospects for what I needed in Vallecas, a neighborhood not too far away. It was a lovely spring Sunday afternoon, so I kissed my lovely wife, jumped on the Metro, and headed out. A brief Madrid geography primer: The dotted line is the Madrid municipal limits. It's a good-sized city, about the size of Denver, or ten times the size of Manhattan. But central Madrid -- the part where we live and where the vast majority of the touristy/Instagram-y things are -- is the vaguely oval-shaped area in the middle inside the M-30 ring road.  A closeup: We live (the large arrow labeled "home") in the southern part of the city, just southwest of the Retiro, near the Reina Sofia museum. Vallecas (yes, th...
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Un paseo entre los almendros

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(A walk among the almond trees)

As I mentioned in the previous post, we've had an extremely rainy winter in Madrid. Last week was our first truly sunny week since December, and we've been trying to get out and enjoy the city more. Some friends of ours told us about a little park out in the suburbs where the almond trees bloom for a short period in February/March, so we decided to visit.

Parque de la Quinta de los Molinos (Estate of the Mills) was originally the private estate of César Cort Botí, an architect and urban planner. In the 1920s he bought about 70 acres of semi-rural land in what was then the outskirts of Madrid, and turned it into a private estate, with almond and olive groves, ornamental gardens with fountains, and a small palacete (palace).1  When he died in 1978, the property was deeded to the city, which converted it into a public park. 



Cort Botí actually made agricultural use of the almond trees; I don't know whether the city still harvests them, but the yearly blossoming is a popular attraction here in the city, especially when madrileños have been as sun-starved as we were. When we got off the metro at the Suanzes station, virtually the whole train exited with us. 


The weather was just about perfect; just a little nip in the air and just a little cloudy, but otherwise warm and pleasant, the right day for getting out and doing anything...including, it seems, a little dance practice. 


Monk parakeets are a relatively recent addition to Madrid. Apparently from the 70s-90s they were widely imported into Europe as pets. Many escaped captivity, others were deliberately released into the wild by neglectful owners who just didn't want them anymore. With no natural predators, they bred quickly, and now roam through the city--particularly the public parks--in large noisy packs. They were making themselves at home chewing on all of the almond buds--yet another reason to get out to see the blooms quickly. 2  

And of course the almond blossoms themselves were beautiful. They reminded me a lot of the cherry blossoms back from when I lived in Washington, D.C.  I saw a few bees buzzing around, which made me wonder what almond honey tastes like...or whether it's even a thing. Apparently almond trees (like cherry trees) only bloom for about 2-3 weeks; I wonder if bees can harvest enough nectar to make a full comb. 


My beautiful wife loves nothing better than a stroll through a peaceful environment out in nature. I think it looks good on her, too. ♥♥♥


1Either being an architect and urban planner paid a lot more in the 1920s than it does today, or I chose the wrong career.↩︎

2Sorta like those idiots in Florida who bought Burmese pythons as pets then just dumped them in the swamp when then got too big. Granted, chewing on almond blossoms isn't quite the same as devouring native wildlife whole (https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/earth-systems/blog/florida-vs-the-burmese-python-how-an-invasive-giant-is-changing-the-sunshine-state/), but you get the idea.↩︎




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