Our Trip to Madrid in October 2000

I travelled to Madrid with my sons for five days in October 2000. I had previously visited the costas, Majorca and Canaries but wasn't sure what we would make of Madrid.

The first thing that struck me as we emerged from Atocha metro station was the greeness of the city. As we walked up Paseo Del Prado, with the Botanical Gardens to our right, the abundance of dark green foliage amazed me. It was October and still very warm, at least to us, as most of the locals seemed to be more thickly clad in jackets and jumpers.

Monumento a Alfonso X11 by zaqarbal

If it's culture that you're after, you'll be fully sated with a great choice of art galleries and museums. If you want to seek out relative calm and shade there are numerous parks and gardens.

Most restaurants served a tasty 3 course meal including drink for around £6 for lunch or dinner (menu of the day). The problem we had was with that the menus were usually only in Spanish and while I could work out that el polo was chicken, other dishes were not listed in my guide book, so it was a bit of a hit and miss to see what would be brought to the table after pointing at the menu. The tapas bars had an abundant choice laid out, including olives, seafood, vegetables and ham.

The metro is very cheap, regular and efficient so all parts of the city were easily accessible. In the main station at Atocha you can wait for your train in style, sitting in the beautiful plant garden, housed in a Victorian wrought-iron and glass arboretum. We did make one trip out of Madrid to Segovia, which quite justifiably claims to be the most spectacularly sited city in Spain, recognisable by the Roman aqueduct which runs right through the town, and the alcazar perched on the cliff. It was good to visit another town but there would have been more than enough to see and do in Madrid for the 5 days that we were there. I think that this can be the disadvantage of the traditional 2 to 3 day city break, you just can't fit everything in and either end up rushing around trying to pack in all the sights and activities or if you relax a bit then you end up thinking that you've hardly seen a thing. I think that Madrid could easily merit a week, especially with a couple of daytrips.

I would recommend Madrid as a short break destination.  There is a good choice of hotels in Madrid for all budgets and lots to see and do for travellers with varying interests.  I think that a visit in spring or autumn is advisable, Madrid is very hot in the Summer, as it lies inland iin central Spain