Our picks for the top things to do in Madrid, plus the must-try restaurants, best hotels at any budget, and a few things you should definitely avoid.<\/p>\n
I studied abroad in Spain over a decade ago, and (like a lot of people who\u2019ve spent time in Madrid) I fell hard for it. Coming from the U.K., the city\u2019s perpetual sunshine definitely has its appeal. But Madrid won me over even more so with its endless tapas crawls and the way the city makes space for an impressive amount of both chaos and calm. Long, slow lunches followed by nights that don\u2019t really get going until 11p.m.? Sign me up.<\/p>\n
Since then, I\u2019ve made it a point to come back over and over, every single year. I\u2019ve still got friends who live here, so I get the local side of the city, too: the parks where people actually hang out, the neighborhoods that aren\u2019t on the tourist maps, the best places for vermouth on a Sunday.<\/p>\n
This guide includes some of the big hitters (you should definitely still see the Prado), but it\u2019s mostly the stuff I\u2019ve come to love from years of visiting\u2013all the things I\u2019d tell a friend before their first trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our picks for the top things to do in Madrid, plus the must-try restaurants, best hotels at any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,5479,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-365743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-madrid","11":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115074808343335528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}