A few weekends ago I went to Madrid, and did so much that I thought it would be better to split it into two blog posts rather than one. If you still need to read part I, you can find it here. Otherwise, enjoy reading part II!
On Sunday morning we left the hotel at 10am and headed to an outdoor market called El Rastro. It is on every Sunday from 9am and is absolutely huge! There are the sort of stalls you might expect to find at a car boot sale, with everything from old dolls and DVDs to piano and furniture, and stalls with more touristy things such as tea towels, magnets and flamenco costumes. As well as that there were plenty of clothes, shoes, handbags, watches, jewellery…
We didn’t buy anything but wandered around amongst the locals and had a good look at everything.
From there we went to El Museo del Prado, which is free for students on Sunday. It was absolutely huge and it was far too tiring to go round every single room and see everything! There are about 50 pieces in the museum that are considered masterpieces, so if you don’t want to try to see everything then aim for those!
Tip: I would recommend getting the audio guide and leaflet. The audio guide tells you all the interesting information about certain paintings throughout the museum, and the leaflet tells you which rooms everything is in, including the 50 masterpieces, so you can pick and chose which rooms you want to see. Unfortunately we weren’t offered a leaflet so didn’t realise there were any until the end, so we missed a lot of the best art!
When we left, we were very excited to see the Real Academia Española (we are language students after all), so took some quick photos then went to the Parque del Retiro, via the Puerta de Alcalá, a big monument at the entrance to the park.
If you really want to enjoy the park you need plenty of time because it is huge and there is loads to do! We rented boats and practised our rowing and had a wander around. On Sunday mornings there are entertainers everywhere, including unicyclists, face painters and people doing puppet shows.
There are a few nice monuments and buildings in the park, which had temporary exhibitions. One of them consisted of fossils hanging by thread from a glass roof, which was strange to see!
After having rested, we walked back to the hotel (via more busy streets with big buildings and statues), then went to the Circulo de Bellas Artes. From what I can gather this is an art gallery that also includes a restaurant (correct me if I’m wrong!), but if you walk to the back entrance you can get to a really cool rooftop bar. We had been told to go at sunset to get the best views, and we were not disappointed! It was understandably busy, so I would say it’s best to arrive a little before sunset, especially if you want to get a seat. But even if you can’t sit down, it is great just to walk around the roof and admire the city from high up!
For our evening meal we ended up in a restaurant that was far too expensive for what we actually ate, but by that point we were a little too tired to care! For pudding we went to llao llao, the ever present frozen yoghurt shop, then called it a night.
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On our last day we treated ourselves to a buffet breakfast in the hotel before catching the metro to Las Ventas bull ring. Luckily there were tours (which we didn’t need to pre-book) so we raced around it with audio guides trying to take it all in. Unfortunately we were conscious of the time because we didn’t want to miss our train home, so we couldn’t really take our time and get the most out of the tour. However, I still really enjoyed it and managed to learn a lot! I got myself another cheesy photoshopped photo of me as a matador before we raced back to collect our bags from the hotel. The rest of the day was travelling and finally being able to sit down!
As I’m sure you can tell, I would highly recommend Madrid! I would say it’s worth planning what you want to do before going, because lots of things are only open on certain days, or cheaper at certain times and so on… I’m glad we had a vague idea of what we were doing because we managed to fit in everything we wanted to!
And now that is one more city I can cross off my ‘to visit’ list….
Life of a Language Graduate 
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Madrid is such a nice city, I have lovely memories…
It really is great there!