Madrid is a pretty confusing place. It’s massive, the streets are dead narrow and everything sort of looks the same.
In Barcelona everyone wanders to the beach, and in Paris everything leads to the river, but in Madrid you’re just forced to wander around like you’re trapped in one of those mad M.C. Escher paintings where nothing quite adds up… or maybe that bit at the end of Labyrinth where David Bowie is throwing that crystal ball about.
That’s not to say Madrid isn’t a good city, it’s just a confusing city. Once you’ve realised that you’re never going to find anything you’ve set out to find, it’s up there with all the other A-list Euro-cities.
The paella is plentiful, the bar-men like posing for daft photographs and it doesn't have that pungent drainage smell that some cities are famous for.
Just don’t do what I did and go there in February expecting it to be t-shirt weather…
