7 tips to spend a (very hot) summer weekend in Madrid
I’m more of a Barcelona fan when it comes to Spain’s big cities. After spending a weekend in Madrid, without completely rejecting a return, I still vouch for Barcelona.
I wasn’t charmed with Madrid, I didn’t fall head over heels with the Spanish capital, and I assume it might have had something to do with a poor choice of dates to travel. Scorching hot days from dawn to sunset is not the best to explore a city on foot, hence jeopardizing my plan for a Madrid cultural weekend.
Under such unwelcoming circumstances, we quickly regrouped, tossed away more than half of our friend’s personal recommendations, and stuck to the highlights while chasing breezy esplanades in the evening and chilled glasses of tinto de verano.
If you ever find yourself facing this problem in the future, you can always follow my tips for a cultural weekend in Madrid in the Summer.
1. Stay central
The more I travel (or, the older I get, that could probably be it), the less hassle I want to have with transportation from and to the hotel to wherever – landmarks, restaurants, airport.
Throw some hot summer days in the picture, and I definitely want to stay as close as possible to my list of must-sees for the day.
Now, I suck at reading maps and making budget decisions based on price point versus location versus comfort. Usually, I only get one of these three things right, and it’s usually not location.
I think it’s because I ask the wrong questions. Instead of “how close to the metro station is this hotel,” I should really ask, “which metro station/line is this hotel close to” – these are two very different questions. The latter gives you a lot more information on the area you will choose to stay.
In Madrid’s case, and keeping the cultural weekend in mind, you’ll want a hotel within walking distance from a metro station of one of these lines: red (line 2, serves the Opera House, the Museo del Prado, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, and Barrio de las Letras – the literary quarter), blue (line 1, serves the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia) or green (line 5, serves Gran Vía in the Chueca quarter and Barrio de la Latina).
We stayed at the budget-friendly Room007 Select Sol Hotel, 5 minutes walking distance from the Opera metro station and 10 minutes walking distance from the Sol metro station, close to shops, cafes, restaurants, Madrid’s Opera House (Teatro Real), and the Royal Palace of Madrid.
Ticket Information
One single ticket for one trip (sencillo combinado metro) costs €1.50 (US$1.76).
During a weekend in the summer in Madrid, assess your resistance to the heat to decide whether to:
- buy tickets as you go
- buy the Metrobús 10 journey ticket (€12.20/US $14.31)
- buy the Tourist Travel Pass – Abono Turístico valid for 1, 2, or 3 consecutive days (€8.40/US $9.85 for 1 day, €14.20/US $16.66 for 2 days, €18.40/US $21.59 for 3 days.)
I’m a time-saving person, so considering the number of Metro trips I took in 2 days (9 or 10), and considering the time I spent buying one single ticket each time (although the ticket machines are easy to use), I would have been better off just buying the Tourist Travel Pass for the 2 days.
Is the Pass a tourist trap? Considering that the Metro ticket from and to the airport has a surcharge of €4.50/US $5.28, I say it’s excellent value for money.
2. Take your time
I try to approach a destination like a blank canvas because I enjoy not having expectations and figuring out what impact a new place will have on me.
Rarely I say I’ll never return to a city and, after this weekend in Madrid, I can assure you I haven’t seen the last of the Spanish capital.
Sure, it wasn’t love at first sight, but I haven’t ticked off all must-sees in Madrid on my list.
I had zero knowledge of what Madrid was about, apart from the museums and my travel mate’s insistence on tinto de verano as something very local and very typical to try. She was right, by the way, it was. In Madrid in the summer, tourists order sangria, locals order tinto de verano.
Splitting my attention between the Lonely Planet Pocket Guidebook, their free travel app, and a friend’s printed-out map with his best tips and advice, I had a rough draft of an idea of where I wanted to go.
You can run around and complete your list of 10 top things to see in Madrid. Still, it’s wiser to book a good tour, pick a couple of highlights to visit properly, and leave enough space to explore the city on foot.
3. Book a local tour
A few years ago, I used to be firmly against group tours, claiming they were the antithesis of authentic independent travel. I may be quick to put my foot in my mouth from time to time, but I’m even faster when it comes to admitting that I might have been looking at travel from the wrong perspective.
So, is booking a guided group tour a good idea for independent travelers?
Yes, if you pay attention to these telltale signs before you do:
- Pick a locally owned company
- Make sure the groups are kept small (under 10 people)
- Assess how the tour helps you give back to the local community
Ideally, I would have done a food tour and an architecture tour if I had the time to do both. So I chose to take a food tour with Devour Madrid because it would be perfect for a first introduction to the city. Check out other Madrid Food Tours,
This tour took us around Barrio de las Letras, the literary quarter I want to explore when I return to Madrid, and introduced us to many of the locals’ favorite eating and drinking spots.
4. Pick two must-see highlights
In our case, we picked museums but feel free to choose the highlights according to your preference.
We had one full day and two half-days to travel in Madrid. We had to be very strict with our planning, considering the hot weather and our need to probably rest between sightseeing (that’s when the central hotel location came in handy).
A visit to the two main museums, Reina Sofía and Prado, was in order, and we knew we wouldn’t skip them. So instead of trying to weave in a handful of things to do in Madrid, we decided to make the best of our museum experience and let the rest flow.
We saw the first one on the day we arrived, Friday before lunch, and the second one on the day we left, Sunday before lunch and before traveling to the airport.
How did we decide the time for each one? In our case, we figured it would take us three hours (tops) for each museum. Both were packed, although I assume that after lunch, it would have been worse. We had plenty of time to navigate the crowds and see the exhibits calmly.
On a next visit, I definitely want to spend more time with Guernica (at Reina Sofía) and the Bosch paintings (at Prado).
Ticket information for the museums
- Museo Reina Sofía – General €10.00/US $11.73
- Museo Nacional del Prado – General €15.00/US $17.60, General Admission + Offical Guide (Recommended) €24.00/US $28.16
- Visit the Tiqets website for paperless, skip the line tickets for these museums and other attractions in Madrid
5. Wander off
After our food tour on Saturday (which included breakfast and lunch), I was determined to explore the city on my own while my travel partner preferred the comfort of the hotel room air conditioner.
Barrio de las Letras had already been covered (we ended up having lunch there on Sunday after the visit to the Prado Museum and before heading to the airport), so Chueca and La Latina were up for grabs.
The problem was that the place I most wanted to visit at La Latina, the open-air flea market El Rastro, only worked on Sundays.
My trip to Chueca was surprising for two reasons.
Firstly, I found it endearing, but it probably wouldn’t top my list of places to return to in Madrid (perhaps if it wasn’t too hot for me to venture away from Calle de Fuencarral, I would think differently).
Secondly, it led me to a free-entrance museum I didn’t remember hearing about before, the Museo de Historia de Madrid (Madrid’s History Museum).
This museum played a double role: it was an (appreciated) air-conditioned refuge, and it showed me that not all museum employees in Madrid are grumpy and borderline rude.
Once again, exploring on foot and detouring led me to a different perspective of the city.
6. People-watching
People-watching is the contrary of staring, gawking, and any form of making others feel uncomfortable with your social observing. You don’t want to do it in the same way you would see animals at the zoo. I do a lot of people-watching even when I’m not traveling.
On Saturday evening, after my poor experience with Chueca, we decided to ditch all tips, guides, friends’ advice and take a stroll around the neighborhood. By then, we hadn’t yet taken a real look at our surroundings besides finding places to eat.
The night before, while eating tapas and drinking sangria (not like the locals, I know!) at a taberna near the hotel, we had witnessed a peculiar event of police officers confiscating tables and chairs from an establishment three doors down from us.
When asking the hotel receptionist and our tour guide the next morning what that was about, they brushed it off as a standard procedure for law enforcement.
Okay, people, it might be perfectly casual to you. Still, for us, it was entirely out of the ordinary, and we’d like you to be as excited about explaining it to us as we were asking it to you.
There’s a chance we’ve watched one too many episodes of Blacklist…
7. If everything else fails, go for free-flowing tinto de verano
If nothing is going according to plan, chill. Find a breezy spot on the terrace of a central café and order yourself a glass of tinto de verano. Chips (and sometimes olives) are complimentary. I don’t know how summers in Madrid usually are, but our weekend was sweltering, and our energy drained pretty fast.
Sometimes cities don’t strike a chord at first sight (my opinion is that you should never be judgmental of a destination or take your experience of it for granted). The Spanish capital most certainly didn’t with me.
Hasta luego Madrid, and may the next time we see each other be full of (more) surprises!
