All things madrileño

This city has a plethora of activities for everyone’s tastes. Weekends and siestas are best spent in Retiro Park (metro: Retiro on the red line), people-watching and listening to the drummers in the area around Alfonso XIV´s statue.

For shopping, Puerta del Sol (metro: Sol, red, yello or blue lines) is a tourist’s haven. Catering to the chain store crowd, you can find some of Europe’s best priced deals at Zara, H&M, Top Shop, Mango and Bershka among others. Other areas, such as the barrio of Salamanca, cater to the wealthier crowd by stocking its stores with all the high-class name brands.

Quick Tips:

Pick up the Friday copy of El Mundo for 1€ and inside is the Metropoli section. Although it’s in Spanish, all you need is your handy pocket dictionary, a map of the city, and the ability to see the pictures to figure out where the hottest festivals are, where to catch a new flick, or what to do with your downtime. Also included are some of Madrid’s best (and most expensive) eateries.

Transportation note: Street signs are virtually invisible on the buildings, so you have to look carefully, normally around the bottom part of the second floor, to find the street’s name.

Best Way To Get Around:

Buy a MetroBus pass for 5,35€ for 10 rides on the metro. The system is one of the best, if not the best, in Europe, as well as being super easy to decipher. If you’re going the cheaper route (or are here during the spring or fall when it’s not the boiling summer temps), just walk. The city is beautiful, sidewalks plentiful and numerous street signs literally pointing you in the direction of plazas or major streets.

Madrid is known for its extravagant nightlife and it’s easily proven. Looking for a good time? Well, it’s not hard to find them. I do recommend having a few drinks before going out if you are a money-conscious college student like my friends and me.

First off, if you look like an American in your 20s, start your night off at Puerta del Sol. Every club has recruiters prowling the streets with offers for a free chupito (small shot) or caña (small beer), free entry, and coupons for drinks (copas). The shots are generally weak and the beer a bad Spanish brand, but it’s free. That’s the best part. Blackjack, Bash, B/A, and Joy are some of the best I’ve seen in the area. This is more of a college area, so you’ll be in the right age group.

It’s easy to spend the entire night prowling around Sol and it’s neighboring areas finding free entry and chupitos, but for more fun, head over to Moncloa (metro: Moncloa, yellow and gray lines). Start off at what the students call Meter Bar on Joaquín María López right off Isaac Peral. For 12€, you’re provided with a meter long tube on a stool with a spiggot and as many cups as you want. Choose between beer or kalimotxo (pronounced ca-li-mo-cho), a combo of cheap wine and Coke, to drink. 12€ sound a bit expensive? Not for five liters of drink it isn’t!

Other clubs for the dance scene are Chesterfield’s (Alberto Aguilera and Blasco de Garay), although it’s a bit American, The Inn, SoHo, and Copernicus. There aren’t as many recruiters in this area, so you do have to do a bit of a group search for clubs. Big tip: avoid the open-air club complex situated between the streets of Gaztambide, Rodriguez San Pedro, Alonso Mellendes and Méndez Váldes. From the start it looks shady and it is. This is the high-school hotspot that has overly-drunk girls puking in the bushes and guys doing lines in the corner of the courtyard.

Feeling a bit out of place and sick of hearing Spanish on your whirlwind tour of the country? Well, check out these pubs for a bit of English (some very heavy on the Irish accents).

My favorite of all is Finbar’s in the neighborhood of Argüelles. It’s cattycorner from the El Corte Inglés store at the corner of Princesa and Alberto Aguilera on Marques Urquijo. The bartenders are all Irish, so it won’t be hard ordering anything you want. They have Murphy’s Red, Guiness and Heineken on tap, as well as several in bottle and a full bar of spirits. A pint of Heineken runs 4,80€, a bit pricy for Madrid, but the atmosphere is worth it. The bartenders hail from Ireland, so they have great accents and great stories. It’s THE place to go for Irish rugby and football (soccer to us) matches, with the crowd being majority Irish, with some of us Americans thrown into the mix with the Spaniards. If you’re English, I advise against going to the bar during the Six Nations tournament when Ireland plays England. You’ll be in a very small minority.

Also, make sure to check out the bar on Tuesday nights when they have live Irish music. My flatmates from Ireland agreed they felt at home and they were back at home in a small country pub.

O´Connell St. in Sol is the Americanized pub. Filled to the brim with stateside folk for the Super Bowl, it allowed all of us to let our hair down and thoroughly practice our English. With a giant screen on the wall, sitting in the upper part is best for big matches, but the two bars and five small TVs help to capture every sporting event. You can be sure to find at least one of the TVs with Amerian sports all the time. The best deal I found was a bucket of six beers, all Corona or all Heineken, or a mix of both, for 14€. When staying for a two-hour game, you’ll probably go through a couple buckets before the final buzzer. As for Kitty O’Shea’s, it’s a chain of Irish pubs around the city and I think Europe. They boast the traditional Irish memorabilia, but with not as much warmth as Finbar’s.