How To Spend A Lazy Day In Madrid

On my recent trip to Andorra, the plan was simple: fly in and out of Barcelona. Ryanair had different plans, however, as the return flight was coming up at a whopping £250. Firstly, WHO is paying that for a Ryanair flight?!? And secondly, fine, I’ll just fly home from Madrid instead – saving £200 and seeing a new city in the process.

Lots of people have told me that they prefer Madrid to Barcelona, which made me feel better about my decision, though I wouldn’t have much time to decide if I agreed. After a relatively early start, I’d be arriving around 11.30am, with a flight to catch at 9.20pm. That gave me roughly seven hours in the city.

I’ll be honest. I arrived in Madrid with a feeling I’ve never felt on my travels before: I can’t really be bothered. It was something like my 25th city last year. Quite frankly, I was citied out.

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But I had a rough plan, and by the end of the day, I declared myself a fan of Madrid. I think I did pretty well with my “itinerary”, so here’s everything I did.

Atocha Station Tropical Garden

Arriving by train meant that I started in Atocha train station. This is an attraction in itself, because it has an entire tropical garden!

It’s actually in a separate part of the station to where my train came in, so I was a little confused when I left the train station having not seen a single leaf. A quick check of Google Maps and I trotted off to the correct area.

What a cool place! Much more interesting than most major train station concourses, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Once I’d had my fix of plants, I headed out with a vague plan to walk up one of the main streets towards the palace. Would I make it all the way? Who knew. The first thing on my mind now was lunch.

Mercado de San Miguel for lunch

I’d already planned where to go for lunch, and there was no other answer but the San Miguel market.

This historic market has become touristy in recent years with plenty of stalls and bars to choose from on top of the fresh produce and various deli counters, but I still enjoyed it and there was loads to look at. It was very busy, but obviously I was there at lunchtime. As with all these types of places, I’d probably recommend visiting off peak, but I was hungry.

I did manage to get a seat too, which was a surprise. I got a couple of different things from two stalls after a long browse through the offerings.

A lot of these types of places have become more like food courts than traditional markets, but I think this offers a good mix of both.

Chocolateria San Gines for churros

As well as lunch, I knew there was one other thing I needed to try: churros.

There are many debates about where is the best place to eat churros in Madrid. A lot of people say it’s not San Gines. But such an institution needs to be checked out at least once, and I even managed to get a table outside after a short queue to order. Another advantage of travelling in November!

So I will say, whether or not they are the best, they are very good!! Perfect churros, very rich chocolate.

It’s worth noting that some of the outdoor tables are outside another San Gines shop – this is for takeaway only, so make sure you go to the main one.

Wandering Madrid

With the essential food out of the way, it’s time to talk about my other stops. I didn’t go into any attractions in Madrid, but I did decide to walk all the way up to the palace, something I wasn’t actually planning to do.

There are some nice views from the terrace, which is free. Like I say, I didn’t go into the palace itself.

Opposite the palace is an even more dominating building – this beautiful church. Made all the more atmospheric by a busking harpist.

I also stopped in Plaza Mayor, the main town square, where I saw Mario and Goofy having a chat. This was something I found a bit odd – there were cartoon characters everywhere!? Obviously they were charging for photos and things, but it wasn’t just in the main square; there was also a Stitch up by the palace. At first I thought they were on a stag do or something, but then realised they seemed to be tourist traps. A quick Google tells me this definitely wasn’t a one-off!

I did at least find a Totoro elsewhere that I could get a free photo of – and I had to get a quick snap of the touristeers just to prove I wasn’t dreaming.

Anyway, Plaza Mayor was pretty but it lacked any real atmosphere that a lot of European town squares have, while I was there at least.

I essentially seemed to walk in a big triangle, as I walked up from Atocha to the palace via Plaza Mayor, and then back along towards the top end of El Retiro park, which meant I met up with the corner of Gran Via, Madrid’s main shopping street.

I didn’t walk down Gran Via at all, but I’m glad I saw the end of it, because it really is stunning.

In fact, I really enjoyed this part of my day because I was just wandering, spotting gorgeous shop fronts, and taking lots of photos of so much architecture that I wasn’t expecting.

Here are a few highlights:

I don’t quite have enough to make a photo post out of it, so here are a few of my favourite shop fronts:

It’s a shame this last one is no longer a book shop, but it’s an amazing facade – probably my favourite from the day.

I also loved the style of the street signs.

And on the opposite end of the scale? Check out these absolutely ridiculous gifts I found in a souvenir shop!

Yes, I’ll take a ham pillow and a pole-dancing cow, please.

And on that note, it was time to chill out. Not like that cow on the right, though.

El Retiro park

The remainder of the day was to be spent relaxing in El Retiro park. (This ended up being not-so-relaxing, as I got a call to say Ash’s dad’s cancer might be back.)

El Retiro might just be my favourite city park in Europe. I sat for a long time next to the boating lake, just people-watching (and dog-watching, of course).

On the opposite side of the lake is the striking Alfonso XII monument, great pillars rising up behind a huge equestrian statue of the former king himself. Did you know he died aged just 27? Perhaps he pioneered the 27 Club, later joined by greats such as Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin.

You might be wondering, like me, why there’s such a large monument for someone who was in power for such a short time of Spain’s history. It appears he achieved a lot in making progress towards stability and peace within Spain. Sometimes younger people really do make a better difference than old men! (Thinking of no country in particular right now.)

I made my way over for a closer look, by way of the rest of the park. At the end of the lake there’s a cafe and some public toilets. Use the toilets at your own risk; they’re not great! But they’re free, so can’t really complain.

Further down is one of the main attractions of the park, the crystal palace, which unfortunately was undergoing maintenance so I skipped it, but it turns out this may have been an oversight as it looks like it’s still very impressive from the outside. I assumed the maintenance meant it would all be in scaffolding but recent reviews suggest not.

But never mind, I went for a wander through the rose garden instead, when my phone rang.

What I should have done was walked straight up from there to the crystal palace to get to the monument by the lake, but I was so distracted on the phone that I just wandered aimlessly. Not that that’s a bad thing in a place like this. There are so many things to just stumble across.

In fact the park is full of various gardens, including one with peacocks! It’s somewhere you could easily spend half a day and not even realise.

And after a while taking photos at the monument, I realised that I had indeed lost track of time and I needed to leave soon to get to the airport. I’d left it a bit tight to head back into town for dinner, and I didn’t know if I could be bothered to walk that far anyway, just to have to walk back here again for the bus. I was contemplating what to do when I remembered I have access to cheap airport lounges through my Revolut account.

So that’s what I did. Instead of exploring the rich culinary options of Madrid (for the record, I had Alimentacion Quiroga on my list), I headed to the airport and settled down in the lounge for unlimited food and drink. Talk about living the high life!

Naturally my flight was delayed too, but it didn’t matter as it just meant more time in the lounge. Which was somewhat dangerous as you could just help yourself to bottles of spirits rather than being served at a bar. It was nuts!

Also, the taxi to the runway takes forever. I started to think the plane was just going to drive all the way to Edinburgh. When we did finally get up in the air, I discovered there is a town somewhere close to Madrid that is shaped like a dog.

Getting from Barcelona to Madrid

When I decided to book Iryo, a rail operator that had only been running for a couple of years, I didn’t know if it was a mistake choosing them over the more well-known Renfe. But it was cheaper and faster, so I decided to risk it.

Firstly, I want to say how bizarre the boarding process is at Barcelona Sants. We had to queue for ages, in 3 or 4 different lines, to an arbitrary barrier set up in the middle of the floor. Once we were through and had our boarding passes scanned, we could go downstairs to the platform to board our train. Eh?! It felt like boarding at an airport gate.

Anyway, once we were on the train, I was pleased to see it wasn’t busy. So it was a little annoying when a whole group of people surrounded me, with one of them sitting next to me. He spent most of the journey leaning away from me chatting, which made me feel awkward about tapping him on the shoulder whenever I needed the loo or wanted to go to the buffet car. They ended up being friendly enough, though.

Other than that, the journey was brilliant! Iryo runs high-speed trains, putting them on a par with Japanese bullet trains. I couldn’t believe this was the third country that I’d been on a train at 300km/ph in the space of a year! Is this the future?

I ended up wishing I’d bought some food at the station (which I was planning to until I saw the bizarre queue!) because the buffet car was very basic, and I settled for a mediocre packaged croissant and a cup of tea. Should’ve brought a bento box.

I highly recommend this journey anyway! It was much more scenic than I thought it would be, and only takes about three hours. Plus I booked in advance for just 32€.

All things considered, it ended up being a pretty perfect day in Madrid.

From the train station on arrival, to the relaxing afternoon in a park, and the fantastic food and stunning architecture in between, this is a really solid city break.

And in visiting Madrid, I’ve also worked out why I don’t like Barcelona. In Madrid, I found myself constantly taking my camera out, which came as a surprise because I had zero expectations of the architecture there. But there was beauty on every corner; down little streets, charming shop signs, huge behemoths suddenly dominating the view of an entire street.

It feels a little unfair to say that Barcelona has none of this, but my time there consisted mostly of half hour walks between places, and do you know how many photos I took on the way? Zero. (Actually that’s a lie – I took one of the bullring when I was near the Sagrada Familia. One.)

This actually helped me to appreciate Madrid more.

So yes, consider me firmly in the Madrid camp of the Barcelona vs Madrid debate.

And of course, there’s plenty that I didn’t do, but I honestly think a day was perfect for an introduction to Madrid. I saw most of the highlights, even if I didn’t go inside. I didn’t feel rushed at all, even though I saw a lot.

I’d say Madrid is a perfect weekend break. It has everything – good food, plenty of incredible architecture, an interesting history to learn about, and a fantastic park to relax in. It’s a classic city break that I think is quite underrated when you compare it to popular European cities like Barcelona and Berlin.

What do you think? Are you Team Barcelona or Team Madrid?