Madrid is not a difficult city. But there are four or five things that, if you know them before you leave, change the whole trip. None of them appears in the guidebooks.
Everyone will tell you to see the Prado and to walk the Gran Vía. You know that already. What almost nobody tells you is how the city works on the inside: what time people eat, when the museums are free, and why the first day is nearly always wasted.
The flight is not the problem. The first day is
There is no direct flight from Honduras to Madrid: you will always connect. And with the time difference, Madrid being seven or eight hours ahead depending on the season, you will land in the morning with your body at midnight.
The classic mistake is to fill that first day with museums. Do not do it. Go out for a walk, eat something substantial at the Spanish hour and hold out until ten at night. One day lost at the start saves you three days running at half speed.
From the airport to the centre is about thirty or forty minutes. The metro goes straight there and is the simplest option if you are not weighed down with luggage.
Nobody eats when you eat
This is the one that throws people most. In Madrid lunch happens between two and half past three in the afternoon, and dinner starts from nine. If at seven in the evening you go looking for dinner, you will find closed kitchens and other tourists just as lost as you.
The trick everyone there uses: the menú del día. Monday to Friday, at midday, most restaurants offer a starter, a main, a drink and a dessert at a fixed price. It is the best food for the money you will find in the city, and it is what the people who work there eat.
And the tip is not compulsory. You leave something if you were looked after well, but nobody expects the percentage we are used to.
The museums are free if you know what time to go
The Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen are a ten-minute walk from one another. All three open free of charge in the last slot of the day, and the Reina Sofía also closes one weekday. The exact hours change with the season, so it is worth confirming them in the same week as the trip.
That said: free means a queue and it means a crowd. If you are going to see the Guernica in peace, or if you want to walk the Prado without someone at your shoulder, pay for the ticket and go early. Going in free at seven in the evening and leaving at eight because they are closing is not the same as having seen the museum.
Four days, four neighbourhoods
Madrid is understood by neighbourhoods, not by monuments. La Latina on Sunday morning, when El Rastro is on and the terraces come after. Malasaña for the small shops and the young crowd. Barrio de las Letras for walking with no plan. Salamanca if expensive shop windows interest you.
Pick one neighbourhood a day and put the map away. The city walks better than it plans.
The spare day is for Toledo
Half an hour by train from Atocha and you are in another era. Toledo can be done in an unhurried day, and it is the best possible contrast after three days of big city. Segovia is the other option, just as close.
If you go in August, consider yourself warned: it is very hot and half the city is on holiday. Spring and autumn are another matter.
The one thing you do have to confirm before leaving
For tourism, Hondurans enter Spain without a visa for short stays. But the European Union has yet to switch on a prior electronic authorisation, and the date has moved several times. Before buying the ticket, confirm where things stand on the day you are travelling: it is the only piece of paperwork that can ruin your trip at the check-in desk.
The rest, the route, the hotels, which neighbourhood suits you best depending on what you want to do, is exactly the kind of thing we prefer to sort out by talking. Tell us how you travel and we will build it with you.
