Madrid, Spain – Recommendations to enjoy this beautiful city!

Our visit to Spain and Portugal in 2025 included new locations for us. Madrid, Tarragona and Madeira.  From its scenic and walkable historic centre to its museums, Madrid never left us without a place to go or an activity to do. This post is to share our time and experiences in Madrid.

Background of Madrid

Madrid, smack-dab in the middle of Spain, is its capital. It is full of elegant boulevards and large tailored parks. Museums are bountiful – the Prado Museum and the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum are two of many, many museums to visit here. The Royal Palace is large and filled to the brim with artifacts and displays of the royal family and its history in the country.

This was our first time visiting Madrid. Honestly, this is amazing given the number of times we have travelled to Spain over the years!  We tend to prefer ocean cities like Barcelona. We are so glad we ventured here. This post is just a snapshot of a few things we enjoyed and tried while visiting Madrid. There is so much more to see and do in Madrid!

Getting to Madrid

For us to get to Spain from Canada, it is by air. On this trip, we flew via Air Canada into Madrid. The Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport is large and spread out. We arrived very early in the morning and many things like information kiosks were not yet open. This was unfortunate. It meant a very sleep deprived me had to aimlessly try and figure out how to get to the Metro entrance. I had read it was straight forward, but, that assumed I understood that a down arrow meant straight ahead.   Figured it out and after walking about 1.5 km, found the Metro entrance for us to get into the city.

There are many options for getting into Madrid. It really depends on your how much time you want to spend, time of day, where you are staying, and so on.  Using an app like Rome2Rio helps with this and you can pick which works best for you.

Our accommodation was right in the middle of the city center – Puerta del Sol.   We wanted to get close to our accommodation as we did have luggage this trip.  The metro took us right to the square (3 different lines!) making it easy.

Accommodations in Madrid

We stayed in an apartment we booked through Booking.com : Waou Apartamentos en Sol Deluxe 2 . The location was very good, and we enjoyed how quiet and spacious it was.  A short walk up some stairs to the accommodation was manageable, and the view out the front to Puerta del Sol was wonderful.  A little bit short on kitchen supplies, but, fortunately inexpensive supplies were available at the local supermarket.[I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through the link in this post.]

Getting Around Madrid

Getting around in Madrid is very easy and straight forward.  As with many large cosmopolitan European cities, it is a grid layout.  A paper map or mapping app are your best friend.  Some streets do change names as they transverse the city.  We were able to complete all of our sight-seeing via the metro and walking while in Madrid.  We did consider booking hop-on hop-off for this trip – this is something we typically do to get our bearings – but, not this time.  Currently, HOHO in Madrid is only panoramic bus tours on their routes, they are not able to stop along the way.  

Check out the Madrid Metro for more information.

Activities in Madrid

Museums

In advance of our visit, we had booked a couple activities.  These included a guided tour through the Prado Museum, and a guided tour through the Royal Palace.  These are available via Viator and Get Your Guide.  You can also wing it on your own by booking the tickets online, and downloading the app to your phone.  A word of warning – make sure you buy them from reputable vendors of these tickets as you will be refused entry if the tickets are not.  

You can’t visit Madrid and not visit the museums!  Besides the two we noted, and the Royal Palace, in our Background section – which we visited – there are many many more including:

• Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
• Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando Museum
• Liria Palace
• Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas (Decorative Arts)
• Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (Contemporary Art)

…and more!

There are museum passes you can purchase if you are inclined to visit more of them.  We highly recommend reading the Madrid Tourism website for all the details!

Tours

Our guided tour was through Naturanda.  This was a fantastic decision!  The guide Marta was very knowledgeable, amusing, and smoothly guided us through the two environments.  Her depth of knowledge, particularly for the Royal Palace tour, was admirable.  

Shows

For a bit of fun, we booked a evening with dinner and flamenco.  Torres Bermejas delivers on a fun entertaining and tasty dinner and performance.  We booked direct online with them.  There are many different food inclusion options.  

Walking Tours

We enjoy walking as much as we can when visiting any city.  Madrid was no different.  You can join both paid and free walking tours (a search on google gives many options).  You can also, as we did, do self-guided walking tours.  We would look up what we still wanted to see, and then check out what optional self-guided walking tours were in that area.  Again, and google search gave us a variety of options.  

Madrid is a shoppers dream.  Well, this shoppers dream!  Spanish brand Desigual has a large multi-floor store near the Puerta del Sol.  La Violeta supplies divine violet candies to enjoy or take home as gifts.  The sweets turrones (artisan nougat) are plentiful with numerous brands vying to get your attention and dollars.  They give away samples at all hours of the day!

Food & Drink in Madrid

Supermarkets:  The Supermercados are plentiful.  We had no challenges finding what we needed and wanted in the variety of grocery stores available to us.  As on previous trips to Barcelona, we visited the Spain megastore – El Corte Ingles.  There is really few places like it, if any, in North America.  The supermarket is on the lower level, and has everything.  If you want to shop for anything else, check out the floors above.  In the branch by our accommodation, there were seven floors!

Another prominent brand in Spain is Carrefour.  There are a variety of brands dependent on the location and size of the store. Again, a lot of selection and the basics are plentiful.

Restaurants:  A standout for us in Madrid was Chez Madrid.  Across the street from the Prado Museum, this is a relatively new restaurant in a great location.  Given the location you may, as a tourist, think it is very touristy.  However, this area is surrounded by museums, government buildings, and the art district.  The menu is curated to shine a light on Madrid favorite dishes.  Tapas are served all afternoon and dinner service starts around 7:30pm.  We enjoyed two nights at this restaurant.  <insert content from insta>

Summary of Madrid

We are so happy that we made it here after all these years!  It is such a lovely large city but it felt very comforting.  On every street there were plentiful cafes for a cortado or cappuccino; a beer or glass of wine; and everyone is out and about enjoying the atmosphere.  From 6pm onwards, the streets are filled with locals looking for a place to have a drink with friends, enjoy a few tapas.  And well into the late night/early morning there are people about doing their thing in this beautiful city.

Check out some of our other trips to Spain here.