One Day in Madrid

Nihan Uğurlu · Keyfi Yazılarım · 2016-10-05

Travel memories from 2016. Hours and prices may change; check official links before visiting.

Personal travel notes, discoveries along the way and photographs from the original story.

Travel notes

Capital: Madrid

Language: Spanish

Population recorded at publication: 7,061,748

Currency: euro

Royal Palace

Buen Retiro Park

After the Canary Islands—I hope you have read that post!—we deliberately chose a flight with a 20-hour connection so we could spend a day in Madrid before returning to England 🙂 Despite having just a day, we saw quite a lot. I had always heard Madrid described differently. Just as people compare Istanbul and Ankara, they compare Barcelona and Madrid: Barcelona to Istanbul, Madrid to Ankara. I hope you have read my Barcelona post too! Seeing Madrid really surprised me, because that comparison didn't ring true. It was so lively, full of people and energy. Perhaps it was because it was Saturday, but every café and restaurant seemed packed. And there were so many excellent-looking places to choose from!

We flew with Iberia into Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport. Naturally, my husband's dream was to see Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu stadium, so we followed the Metro signs from Aeropuerto T4 towards line 8 for Nuevos Ministerios 🙂

Santiago Bernabéu

Following the signs and our phone map, we found the stadium easily. I had expected something even more enormous; sitting in the city, it reminded me of Şükrü Saracoğlu stadium. Of course, this one has such a history: years of championships, world-famous players and so much more. You can pay to tour it on certain days. We bought tickets at the stadium and took about two hours. The route began at the top and worked down through the dressing rooms, VIP areas, substitutes' bench, LED-screen displays and trophy cabinets—so many trophies! It was all very good. Even for such a huge club, it is impressive how well they turn this into an experience and a source of income. It was so crowded that taking photographs or even walking through some areas was difficult. Seeing Ronaldo's, Bale's and Modrić's places in the changing room made us say 'Wow!' and wonder what had happened in those very seats. Though I admit I wasn't especially fond of Modrić after that goal he scored in the European tournament 🙂

The ticket queue

The VIP area

How the club crest changed over the years

I was delighted to see the trophy connected with Turkish Airlines' sponsorship of the 2015 EuroLeague and Real Madrid's basketball team 🙂

Champions League trophies—ten, if I counted correctly 🙂

A display showing tweets arriving live on Real Madrid's official Twitter account 🙂

This picture explains why I had expected something grander: apparently there was a redevelopment project to make it look like this. That seemed more like what I would expect from a club as big as Real Madrid 🙂

The place where injured players are brought.

Finally, this is where the players walk out onto the pitch. We came out too and continued our Madrid visit, taking the nearby Metro towards the centre. Madrid was far livelier than I expected. I had imagined a quiet city and had been completely wrong. Cafés and restaurants were everywhere, and people were still out at one or two in the morning, when we returned to the airport. I suspect they stayed much later! I have always thought Spanish people resemble us: their gestures, ways of speaking and behaviour felt familiar. Some Madrid buildings and streets did too. Anyway, there I go talking too much again 🙂 Even squeezed into one day, we explored a lot and enjoyed ourselves enormously. Madrid is already on my list to revisit.