¡Madrid tiene de todo! Madrid has Everything

Yes, Madrid has everything! Now, it is possible that the city that never sleeps has calmed down a little in recent years. However, even though the bars close a bit earlier these days (and you can’t smoke in them!), you can still count on finding a party atmosphere at all times of the day and in all situations. Then once you have had enough of socialising, you can take a few days out and enjoy the best square kilometre of art to be found in Europe. A site I would highly recommend is A Spoonful of TLC . This is a genuine “must-visit” site for anybody looking for “THE Real Madrid as opposed to Real Madrid!”. Another site I rate very highly is Madrid Man as he gives an excellent foreigner’s view and I am supposing that you would not be reading this if you were a madrileño!

One of the best ways of getting around Madrid and the possibly the best way to get to know the city is on a Madrid Vision double-decker bus. You can jump on and off the buses as many times as you like for the cost of a single ticket. If you need a fix of books and don’t want to join a library, I recommend the Secret Kingdoms Enjoy!

Madrileños are without doubt great sports fans and the citizens of Madrid really got behind the city as it prepared another bid – this time for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games – after narrowly losing out for the 2012 games to London, the 2016 games to Rio and the 2018 World Cup to Russia. Yet again, they were not successful as the 2020 games were awarded to Tokyo! Another big favourite is a tour of the Real Madrid stadium (the Santiago Bernabéu stadium). The official club site has all the information. The tour is a great couple of hours for any football fan when you can relive the memories of arguably the greatest club in Europe. Atlético de Madrid play across the other side of town in their fantastic new Wanda Metropolitano stadium and for 2023/24 there are four Madrid district clubs in La Liga with Rayo Vallecano and Getafe also present. If your visit is to watch a football game, I recommend the excellent Football Weekends website which has excellent information about all the Madrid area clubs.

To download a full PDF travel guide of Madrid courtesy of Arrival click here Another excellent and very up-to-date guide courtesy of is Trip Advisor’s. Europe’s Famous Hostels have also produced an excellent guide for the budget traveller which can be downloaded from the Europe’s Famous Hostels website.