All photos taken and edited by yours truly.
On one fine evening of June 2019, we landed in Madrid, the capital of Spain. We planned to stay in Madrid for a day and a half. The journey to Spain, for myself, was always about the two cities in southern Spain: Granada, and Cordoba. The fascination with those two cities stemmed from my love for history, predominantly my love for the history of Muslim Spain. How Jews, Christians, and Muslims created a culture of tolerance in medieval Spain (a title of a fantastic book by Maria Rosa Menocal).
The weather in Madrid was hot — scorching hot. To try and avoid the afternoon heat we stayed indoors as much as we could and stuck to walking in the shade. At one point, the bus station display showed that the temperature was 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit), but due to our limited stay, we braced ourselves to be cooked by the sun and walked to most of the places. I had purchased tickets to the Royal Palace in advance and we walked around in awe, looking at the magnificent decorative rooms. Photography was prohibited in some areas as guards were marching left and right, shooing at anyone that would dare to try to take a photo. They had their eyes on everyone. As a self-imposed rebel and a photographer, I proceeded to take photos wherever I could (guilty as charged).
