Madrid and Beyond

I waited too long to post this trip and I fear I've already forgotten many of the tips I would have liked to share. Let's see... First of all, we liked Madrid very much, both for its looks and for how clean it is and how well its services work. With almost 5 full days available, we rented a car with Rentalcars and from Tuesday morning at 8.30 to Wednesday at 19.30 we managed to go and see the windmills south of Madrid, Toledo, Avila, Segovia and the Escorial. We arrived in Madrid on Saturday at lunchtime and until Monday evening we managed to see everything we wanted to, and it wasn't a little! Yes, we keep a frantic pace, but in reality I had planned well what to do, read the many useful travel tips that, alas, not everyone gives, and arranged a few things from home. The first was booking the Abono online for 3 days.

It's a pass that lets you travel free on all public transport; you collect it at a ticket office at the airport and, if you do it that way, it lets you reach the city with no surcharge, because otherwise the metro ticket alone from the airport into Madrid costs more. If you want, you can book it for the museums too, but we chose not to because at the weekend many museums are free, at least from a certain time onwards. Watch out for your flight's arrival time, because the ticket office closes, I think, at 22. The ticket, which we paid 17 € for, comes with a little map, and you can also collect it at the tourist offices in the city. The metro serves the whole city in detail, but at the weekend it runs every 7-8 minutes, which isn't much considering there are so many lines, but you often have to take several to reach your chosen spot.

Also, lines that appear to be connected really are, but often you have to climb a lot of stairs and walk long underground routes to reach them. In short, if you want to see a lot in little time, the metro is essential, but it's tiring too and takes up time! After carefully studying the free museum opening hours from home, directly on each museum's website, we planned and did this: on Saturday we started with the Reina Sofía, where the real marvel is "Guernica", and then the Prado, free from 18.00 and whose queue to get in is in fact very fast. The Prado, as everyone says, contains "too many" works, so we focused mainly on those recommended by our guide (National Geographic, my favourite series) as well as those that struck us particularly. "Las Meninas" is a masterpiece; the two Maya vestida and desnuda did nothing for us at all.

All the same, there's everything in there and it's the classic museum you should return to again and again. On Sunday morning we went to the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, always paid and closed on Mondays: a treasure chest of history and artworks, with guided tours of at least an hour roughly every 50 minutes: don't miss it. From there we quickly took the metro to see the rich Museo de América, free that day, and then the Museo de Artes Decorativas, also free, interesting because the building that houses it is an original 19th-century residence of a noble family.

After lunch we devoted ourselves to another great painting museum, the qualitatively and quantitatively very rich private collection and therefore never free, the Thyssen-Bornemisza: not to be missed, and also worth revisiting several times!! On Monday we visited the beautiful Royal Palace, left for that day precisely because, as in Italy, on Mondays many museums and monuments are closed, and the Catedral de la Almudena. Generally I don't go mad for this kind of royal-barracks palace, but this one enchanted us! The variety and richness of the rooms, the weapons collection, the pharmacy! In the afternoon we went to visit the largest bullring in Spain, the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, a little disappointing, perhaps because of the rather dull guide we got, but still worth visiting, at least to get an idea of this, however debatable, tradition of theirs.

In the evening we went to see a flamenco show at the Tablao Santa Rosa in Plaza Santa Ana, booked by email from Italy; you can have dinner or, as we did, just have a drink which, together with the show, which lasts barely an hour and is fantastic, costs 21 €. The venue itself is interesting too.

Besides that, we visited churches, walked a lot around the famous squares (the Plaza Mayor, where the judges of the Inquisition used to gather, I liked very much), the great monumental avenues and the medieval quarters with countless alleys, which I would never have expected in this city, the Parque del Buen Retiro, the city's lungs with its little lake and the beautiful Palacio de Cristal, in liberty style, open until 18.00 but very visible from outside too, we reached the famous Kio towers, 2 pseudo-skyscrapers of strange shape, and also the Bernabéu stadium, which we didn't want to visit, because frankly this world of football is becoming a ridiculous thing given the money that circulates...

entry cost 19 €, as if it were the Sistine Chapel! It's worth a snack at the liberty-style market of San Miguel, near Plaza Mayor, both for how it's been laid out and for what you can find to eat and drink, but strictly standing up. We ate a lot of fresh fish, drank many cheap Cañas (beers) and went no fewer than 2 times to Cien Montaditos, a Spanish chain we already knew in Valencia that sells you beer for 1 € and delicious mini sandwiches that on some days mostly cost a single euro.

We also went twice to the deservedly famous San Ginès chocolate shop to eat churros, pieces of fried doughnut that you have to eat after dipping them in the delicious hot chocolate! In short, I think that despite seeing and doing too many things in so little time, we managed to live this city a little, and we liked it very much, even though it isn't the classic capital with lots of monuments, but a city full of life, rich in well-kept wonders, magnificent views often dotted with sumptuous fountains, but also with a vast network of charming alleys of clearly medieval layout. Then, as I said, everything works well, the museums close late and people are CIVIL, which is no small thing!!!