The quaint town of Alcalá de Henares

On Monday, we visited Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes. (not that we cared about him :P )

We visited it since we had covered the main destinations in Madrid itself, and Alcalá de Henares was just an hour’s train ride away.

Walking from the train station to the town centre, we passed this building that looked impressive.

From Google Maps, this is the Palacete de Laredo (Palace of the Laredo). It is marked as permanently closed, though.

We dropped into a small supermarket and browsed around…when exiting, I noticed that they provided customers a place to lock their shopping trolleys. :O

The box on the counter is something that we bought…torreznos. After the disappointing non-crispy one that we tried at the food market on our first day, this looked better so we decided to try it. And it was as crunchy as expected!

Then we visited the Clarisa convent, for the main purpose of trying their famous candied almonds. They are sold during limited hours of the day. The story is that the convent has a strict rule that the nuns are not supposed to meet anyone, so the almonds are sold via a turntable. You can read the story on the signboard below: 

the wooden door houses the wooden turntable, and the display above shows all the different types of packaging for the almonds, and their prices

We bought the cheapest box for 2€. (Or did we go for 3€? But I think it was 2€ because we just wanted to try some.)

The almonds were good enough, but not especially tasty that I would recommend them. I'm not sure why they are so famous...maybe because it's a small town. :P 

nearby (not sure whether it belongs to the convent)

Plaza de San Diego

roses in the park

Sadly, what was supposed to be the highlight of the visit, Plaza de Cervantes, was undergoing some sort of construction and barricaded off.

zoom in to see the statue of Cervantes

at the other end of the square

a pretty road lined with trees (and parked cars, haha)

leading to that building at the end...

...whatever it is :P

Then we came across another statue of Cervantes.

a little weathered

Then we reached this square beside the cathedral (Catedral Magistral de los Santos Justo y Pastor).

my mother said that the little girl turned around as if I was taking a photo of her...

from another side

the cathedral

inside the gates

After that, we took a break at a nearby bar. The weather was great, so we sat down outside and ordered a vermouth to share.

La Tomasa

And then they brought two glasses of vermouth instead of one...together with a free plate of tapas (appetizer/snack). They say that in big towns like Madrid, the practice of giving a free tapa per drink ordered was dying out, but it was still done in small towns like this one. Anyway my mother said let's just go with two glasses.

this is how it looked like where we were sitting...over there is the cathedral

With the two glasses, we decided we probably needed a little more to eat. :P So I went to get the menu.

Here I noticed something interesting... The prices are higher for those sitting outside (on the terrace/terraza). Sala is inside the restaurant. I wonder whether the prices are flipped in winter when it's cold outside...

We spotted callos a la Madrileña (Madrid-style tripe) on the menu. This was one of the dishes we wanted to try on our trip, so this turned out well and we ordered it.

yummy, we liked it!

the bread came with it; nothing special, but it goes well with the sauce!

Then we walked to the Madrid Gate (Puerta de Madrid). It is part of the medieval walls surrounding the town.

the medieval walls

Then we made our way back to the train station, passing the Archbishop's Palace (Palacio Arzobispal) along the way. 

we saw someone come out, so we tried to go inside, and got shooed away :P (at that time we didn't even know what the building was, we thought it might be a library)

an arch that we passed through

That's all for this little town. Hope you liked it!