 Sipping
a café con leche surrounded
by the handsome Renaissance buildings
of Plaza Mayor, it’s difficult
to understand why Madrid so often
plays second fiddle to Barcelona.
Madrid
has enough museums and galleries
to turn most European capitals green
with
envy, arguably the best nightlife
on the mainland and numerous green
spaces
to enjoy the Castilian sunshine.
Madrid has a rich cultural heritage
and no city break is complete
without a visit to the Museo del Prado.
The works hanging inside provide
a definitive
history of European painting
from
the 15th to the 19th centuries,
with notable contributions from
home-grown talent including Goya and
Velasquez.
If your tastes are more contemporary
the Reina Sofia and Thyssen-Bornemisza
museums should satisfy any cultural
cravings, the centerpiece of
which is Picasso’s Guernica;
an elegiac tribute to those who suffered
in
the Spanish civil war.
Madrid is home to the world’s
largest bullring; the mighty 25,000-seater
Plaza de Toros Monumental de las
Ventas. Personal politics aside,
if you manage to get tickets for
the San Isidro festival, you’ll
get a unique insight into the Spanish
psyche. The spectacle of a corrida
(bullfight) certainly inspired Earnest
Hemmingway, who having penned Death
in the Afternoon’, then went
on to proclaim “I was not born
in Spain, but that wasn’t my
fault”.
Madrid is well-known for the warmth
of its people, and at no time is
it more evident than at sunset when
capital’s tapas bars begin
to wake up. Madrilenos will happily
visit four or five tapas bars in
one night, working their way through
a selection of local delicacies washed
down with a few glasses of vino tinto
(red wine). ‘Nightlife’ is
something of a relative term in Madrid
as nothing gets going until the small
hours, whereupon the discobares then
don’t stop buzzing until dawn.
Madrid’s boasts some of Spain’s
best (and most outrageous) nightspots
and after a few hours on the tiles
you’d be forgiven for thinking
that you’d slipped into a Pedro
Almodovar film.
Madrid is synonymous with shopping
and entire weekends can easily disappear
gazing through the well-polished
windows of chic boutiques. However,
for something different it’s
difficult to beat the El Rastro flea
market on Sunday mornings. In fact,
Madrid has so much to offer that
the only problem you’re likely
to have is working out how to cram
everything in.
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