TNT Travels

36 hours in madrid. I’ve been here with work before but never as a tourist. What an absolutely beautiful city. The buildings are stunning, the people are lovely and the atmosphere instantly puts you at ease. You always need to keep your wits about you in a city but Madrid never makes you feel on edge. We got to our hotel, Gran Versalles at 16.30 and pretty much headed straight out. We nailed 22k steps over that evening and the following day. On arrival, we headed straight for Mercado de San Miguel. Think of a small scale Spanish version of Alty market. I had been with work before so obviously hadn’t batted an eyelid at the cost before. Bit of an eye opener!

13 euro for 2 large beers. 8 euro per crab roll. €20 for teriyaki tuna and 5 x 1 inch and a half wafer thin slices of tuna. Although a bit pricey, the atmosphere was amazing. We ended up chatting with 2 Canadian guys who joined our table. We briefly shared our life stories, and bantered about our travels and whether a marriage can survive being in each others pockets 24/7 🤔. Let’s just say out of the 4 of us, 50% were divorced and the other 50% travelled away a lot with work 😉. The market felt like a tourist must do and just around the corner is Calle de le Cava de San Miguel, a really pretty road of quality historic restaurants.

We had a little wander around the local streets and plazas.

We then stumbled across (literally) La Museo de Jamon on Calle Mayor. It simply housed an oval shaped bar that sat alongside a butchers. You can sit at the bar and just people watch, eat and drink. It was buzzing. €3.80 for 2 beers and you got a plate of Jamon (ham) for no extra. As if by magic, you order 2 more beers and your snack gets upgraded to mini sausage and chips. If we had stayed for a few more rounds we would have eaten our body weight in calamari and paella. It doesn’t take long to realise you can have a lot of beer and eat well for not a lot.

We headed back towards the hotel via the Chueca district. We hadn’t realised it was the LBGQT hotspot but it probably explains why everyone was friendly, relaxed and there were lots of rainbow flags. Terry popped his Rum Sour cherry. Quote, unquote, one of the best cocktails he’s ever had! All other cherries were safe!

We then discovered the Tiger bar. A student haunt with some scary stuffed animal heads on the wall.

In there you could get 2 beers for 9€ and 2 ma-hoo-sive plates of pinchos. We brought the average age down by a couple of generations but again, the atmosphere was buzzing and friendly. A few more bars lured us in on the way back to the hotel. The last one was an Irish Bar, pretty much opposite the hotel. Not exactly cultural but they had a fiddly, diddly band so would be rude not to pop our heads in.

Day 2, was the big walking day. Normally we embrace the open top bus tour to get our bearings but when it’s 14 degrees and your next stop is 35 degrees, you realise that your wardrobe is more conducive to freezing your cahunas off. Hence we went walking. I love old buildings so we headed for the Grand Palace. Lovely spot for the only selfie we took and then we went wandering some more. If I had a euro for every time Terry commented on my limited knowledge of espanol following my intensive 3 weeks Duolingo course, he would have a very expensive funeral.

We had lunch in Emma’s Cocina, a little tapas place, literally next to the San Miguel market). Food was great. We (I) made a slight balls up. There were 2 prices on the menu; racion and tapas. Racion being more expensive. She asked if we were sharing, I said ‘si’, nailing the Spanish again so we got 4 main plates instead of tapas. On the bright side we explored the Malansana part of the city that night. They serve pinchos (food with every drink) so no requirement for fine dining and as full as a huevo (egg) in no time. This part of town was great, very studenty in places but we stumbled across one of the oldest bars in Madrid, judging by the inch layer of dust on the bottles (and the sign on the door). There was no Del Boy bar hatch, just a crawl space in the middle so it made us appreciate the yoga like agility of the man delivering the lemons. Following that, we hit 1862 dry bar. It had a speakeasy vibe with cocktails circa 10-12€ each. We then hopped over the road for cheap beer. This place was buzzing, specialising in tortilla. We had truffle and brie tortilla, which I asked Terry to order on his maiden journey to the bar. Turns out he nailed it and we got what we wanted and no one got decapitated at the bar whilst he waved his hands about ordering.

We called it an early night at 10.30 (original plan was 1 hour earlier) given we had a 5am alarm call for our flight to Columbia. Madrid, gracias , it’s been muy bueno.