Refreshed after a solid night’s sleep I headed back to the beautiful restaurant in my hotel for breakfast.

I was down there for 6.59am!

This morning’s breakfast was a bowl of fresh fruit (I didn’t feel I’d been eating very healthily on the trip!)…

…followed by some ham, cheese, bacon, tortilla, and – in a nod towards the vegetable variety of food – some mushrooms.

Then I headed back down to the library where I sat and wrote my blog for an hour or two.

Visiting the Faro de Moncloa

To start my day proper, I knew exactly what I was going to do. On my first night in Madrid, I’d been curious about this tower (on the right) that I’d viewed through my bedroom window…

A quick visual search on my phone revealed this was Torrespaña. Commonly known as El Pirulí, it’s a communications tower for the broadcaster RTVE, and was built in 1982 to ensure the solid distribution of pictures from the 1982 World Cup. I can actually remember being in Majorca for that and buying a glass with the World Cup mascot on it with my holiday money! 😀

Anyway, sadly for me, it’s not possible for members of the public to climb El Pirulí. But that did make me think about seeing whether there was anything else I could ascend while I was in the city. And it turned out there was! The Faro de Moncloa is around half the height of Torrespaña, but you can go up it! I gathered up my stuff, and hopped on the metro.

Faro de Moncloa’s in the university area of Madrid, and it was about a twenty five minute ride to get there. The metro was pretty quiet, probably because it was still quite early on a Saturday…

It was around ten o’clock when I ascended from the Moncloa metro station out on to the street. The sky was a bright blue, and the first thing I saw was this impressive building. It turned out to be the headquarters of the Spanish Air and Space Force. Pretty grand!

I had to navigate around a large roundabout, decorated with a large arch – built in the 1950s at the request of Franco to commemorate a victory in a battle in University City during the civil war. You could see the Faro de Moncloa straight away though!

It looks far away, but it only took me about five minutes to get to the entrance.

The place was deserted! No queue here! I paid my four euros entry fee at the ticket desk, put my bag through an x-ray machine, and got into the lift which would whisk me 92 metres up in the air.

I’m not going to lie – as you can hear I got a bit queasy in the lift! But the view was already amazing.

I had the whole observation deck to myself.

The only other person there when I arrived was a lady that worked there who spent the whole duration of my visit on the phone to what sounded like a mate. Easy money!

Displays around the upper level of the deck pointed out the buildings you could spot from the panoramic windows. And for once with these things, it was actually easy to spot the buildings the displays were referring to. Madrid looked to consist mainly of fairly low level buildings, which made taller buildings stand out straight away.

Teasingly, Torrespaña was one of the buildings the display pointed out…

Maybe one day I’ll get to go up that too!

I walked around the lower level of the deck, gazing out the window. There was a gap between the floor and the window with a railing in between, which meant you couldn’t press up against the window (probably a good thing!) so any photos always had a reflection in them.

But it was a great way to get a panoramic view of the city. It’s got to be the best view of Madrid you can get really? Although one I’d enjoyed a sunset from on my last visit to the city wasn’t bad either!

During my time at the top of the tower, a couple of other people arrived, but I think there was only four or five of us there in total. It seems to be an attraction that’s not really on most tourists’ radar.

I was in the lift back down to terra firma when a notification popped up on my watch to say it was running out of battery. Obviously it hadn’t charged overnight, which was really annoying! I thought about it for a minute then decided to head back to the hotel so I could quickly charge it.

Shopping in Salamanca

Once I had that all sorted it was time to hit the shops again. This time I wanted a nosey around Salamanca – which is home to boulevards filled with high end shops. Although I’d be spending my money in non-high end shops!

Looking at a map, I decided to take a route through a park, which ran up the middle of a road, and past the Prado Museum, actually a gallery which I’d visited on my last trip. It turned out I was walking through the Fuentes de los Jardines de Recoletos.

It was pretty chilled…

And I passed some incredible buildings. The Palace Hotel…

And this…

Aren’t they amazing? Madrid is full of buildings like that. That one above, from what I could tell, was the City Hall which contains an amazing glass ceiling made up of over 2,000 glass triangles.

I passed this statue in a big square…

…and though I was nearly at Salamanca noticed something on my map which I thought it would be worth going to have a look at.

When I got there, not only did it not really look like very much…

…but I couldn’t find a sign anywhere saying what I had seen on my map. Eventually I spotted a small sign on the wall above the entrance to a restaurant.

I’d thought it just worth going to have a look at a square that had been named after a British politician. I thought it was quite cool (regardless of your take on the politics) for a British person to have a square – which would be there for posterity or at least a long time – named after them. There was a big sculpture in the plaza which I thought might have made reference to Thatcher. Instead it seemed to be about how a bank had inaugurated something. It felt a bit sad that despite having a square named after you, the only reference to it was well hidden!

I passed Platea, an upmarket food hall which I’d visited on my last trip – weirdly just thinking to myself a couple of minutes before I came across it that it was down that street – my spidey kind of sixth sense striking again!

It wasn’t open so that was out for lunch!

I had a quick look in Uniqlo and tried on some trousers before leaving empty handed, and then had a look in Loewe, the eye-wateringly expensive Spanish upmarket clothing and accessories brand.

I found it quite intimidating inside! As soon as I put my foot in the front door I was allocated a man who then followed me all over the shop – including downstairs. All I wanted was time to properly look at things, but I felt I couldn’t with him breathing down my neck. So I just did a swift circuit of the shop, thanked him and left. Having made a purchase from Loewe earlier this year (Something cheap!) I might have bought something if I hadn’t felt under so much pressure!

Next I went into what is probably one of Zara Home’s flagship stores. I was prepared to be underwhelmed, as I had been in València, but how wrong I was!

As soon as I stepped inside I knew I was going to be making some purchases! I couldn’t get many photos inside, but there was lots which was interesting. There was a massive new fitness range which had everything from skipping ropes and yoga blocks to weights and exercise towels…

There was a cool “Corner café” collection which doesn’t appear all on one page on their website which means I can’t link to it but here are some items from it which I thought were cool!

I ended up spending £100, which at home would have probably meant spending £150. I cannot tell you how amazing this salty butter croissant room spray smells – or this coffee cream candle!

Searching for lunch

I picked up a couple of items in Mango Man before deciding to go and look for someplace for lunch – by this time it was approaching 2pm. Little did I know I was going to have a bit of a hunt!

I came across another of Madrid’s markets – Mercado de la Paz….

Inside were stalls again packed with great looking food…

…but most of its restaurants seemed really mobbed – particularly Casa Dani with its two deep queue inside.

I also thought I might prefer a brighter place to sit in for lunch.

The market wasn’t the only place selling great food. Walking up an adjacent street I stumbled across an amazing deli – Mantequeria Bravo – with walls lined with wooden shelves stocked with high end food. Apparently it’s been there since 1931.

Just across the street was an amazing looking greengrocers’ too.

I wasn’t sure quite what I was in the mood of for lunch, but by now I was beginning to feel a bit knackered carrying my bags about and a bit hungry too.

Around the corner was a branch of El Corte Inglés, so I thought I might as well nip in and see what the food options were there.

I went right up to the top floor restaurant (maybe subconsciously thinking of that club sandwich), only to be told there were already a line of people waiting for a table. Pass!

Next was Honest Greens – a casual healthy eating chain I’d also spotted in València.

Now in the UK, it actually started in Barcelona. Thinking it could just hit the spot, I went in only to find it absolutely rammed. There were no seats, and a queue at the counter to order snaked back and forward about three times.

Everywhere I looked for lunch was the same – there must be a real dearth of restaurants in the Salamanca area!

Next door to Honest Greens was a Starbucks, but I really didn’t fancy that – and a VIPS. Now VIPS had kind of intrigued me, as I’d come across it during previous trips to Spain. I can’t think of anywhere in the UK which would be similar to it, perhaps Garfunkels if you remember that? But it’s a chain of “family restaurants” – a format that exists in Japan too, but maybe not so much in the UK where chains are more themed around a specific cuisine.

I think VIPS holds a bit of a place in Spanish culture, so I thought ‘why not!’ and decided to give it a go. I had a short wait at the host stand before being shown my seat. VIPS was packed too, but thankfully it wasn’t too noisy.

The decor was bright and modern, and the place was spotlessly clean too. A friendly waiter came over and gave me a menu and offered to answer any questions. The menu was pretty extensive – there were salads and bowls, burgers, sandwiches (I was tempted by one called Fundy O’Clock) and meat and fish dishes as well. In the end I went for a Coke Zero and the Rainbow Poke Bowl – with salmon, avocado, mango, edamame, wakame, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, rocket, pickled onion, and sriracha mayo on sushi rice.

Probably about ten minutes later my food arrived. The service was slick, and as for lunch… well it wasn’t bad at all! Look at that! It was bigger than it looked.

I polished that off pretty quickly and it felt good to eat something remotely healthy! My lunch came to €21,70 including a tip which I thought was maybe on the pricier side of the lunches I’d had, considering it was a chain, but I couldn’t really argue with what VIPS offered – it was tasty, fast, ok surroundings, and most importantly they’d managed to fit me in!

An arty afternoon

I hopped on the metro back to my hotel to dump my shopping and then decided to get a bit of artistic inspiration by visiting an art museum. I’d done the Prado on my last visit to Madrid, so this time I decided to go contemporary, and visit the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia – what a mouthful! Shortened to the Museum Reina Sofia, the museum specialises in 20th Century Spanish art.

The museum was only a seven minute stroll away from my hotel. While entry for the last two hours of the day is free, I’d be missing out on that by a couple of hours – it would be half past four by the time I got there. The museum’s open until around 9pm most nights (apart from a Tuesday when it’s closed and on Sundays when it closes at 2.30pm). I decided to quickly book a ticket online and set off.

The museum’s made up of two main buildings – the Nouvel Building and the Sabatini Building. But it also looks after two palaces – the Palacio de Velásquez and the Palacio de Cristal. Both inside Madrid’s Retiro Park, these ornate buildings are often used for installations and exhibits.

I entered through the museum’s Sabatini building entrance – flanked by two glass lift towers.

After skipping an enormous queue thanks to my online ticket, I was soon in the cloisters surrounding the museum’s gardens.

Unfortunately the latter was closed due to building works!

I picked up a floor guide from a helpful lady at an information desk, and set off. She advised me to start on the second floor and work my way up.

I’ve got to say the museum is organised brilliantly. It has a bit of a confusing layout, but there are guides and maps everywhere…

…and there’s a really clear methodology behind how the exhibits are structured. Rooms are numbered, and themed too. So when you start exploring, you can see as you move from one room to another how one artistic period influenced another and so on. The museum’s really done a brilliant job of making everything easy to understand and accessible too.

I got the lift up to the second floor and started exploring.

I really love visiting art galleries and museums. I’m not going to pretend I’m a massive art fiend (although I know what I like!) but I just find it really creatively inspiring – it’s like it keeps your brain young or something, you know?

I loved some old black and white photographs taken in Madrid…

… and some really cool art deco style advertisements.

There were some photographs too of damage from Spain’s civil war. This one was of damage from a night air raid on Plaza Antón Martín – just a couple of steps up the street from my hotel.

I think the museum is most famous however for its collection of art by Picasso…

and Salvador Dali.

The biggest crowd was definitely around Picasso’s Guernica. I didn’t know much about this painting.

Picasso had been commissioned by Spain’s Republican government to create a piece of art for the Paris Exhibition to be held in the Summer of 1937. He’d started on one idea which he abandoned after reading about how the town of Guernica in Basque Country had been bombed relentlessly for two hours by Germany, which had lent support to Franco’s Nationalist movement. The painting’s almost eight metres wide and three and a half meters tall, and depicts the horrors of war.

Picasso had stated Guernica was to remain at MoMA in New York until Spain had re-established a democratic republic. It wouldn’t be until 1981 – after both Picasso and Franco had died – that the mural would arrive in Spain.

Apparently while Picasso was living in Nazi-occupied Paris in World War II, one German officer saw a photo of Guernica in his apartment asked the artist “did you do that?”. “No you did” was Picasso’s reply.

With the third floor of the Sabatini Building currently closed (it’s due to reopen in 2027), I made my way up to the top floor, where the exhibits consisted of much more contemporary works.

I loved these real 1980s designs for a bar called La Mode.

It reminded me a bit of a piece I’d bought from a Texas-based artist which I really love.

There were some cool record cover designs as well…

I really love that whole 80s look…

I must make a small confession here. I don’t think I ever entered the museum’s other building – I never found an obvious link corridor which is on the fourth floor. The Nouvel building has exhibitions on the third and first floors, and I only ever walked around the second and fourth floors of the museum. So I think I missed half the museum. But I can always do that next time I’m in Madrid! I took the glass lift down from the top floor…

…and had a quick look in the museum shop but nothing caught my eye. My visit had lasted around two hours – perfect timing for me to head back to the hotel, get showered and then go out for something to eat. I also had a couple of purchases I wanted to make on my last chance to visit the shops.

A lacklustre final dinner in Madrid!

Once I’d got changed back at the hotel, I decided to visit the restaurant for a drink, as to make up for my room manoeuvres, the hotel had given me two vouchers for cocktails and tapas. I loved the staircase and decor on the way to the restaurant.

I have to say the tapas I got free with my vouchers were not very impressive – literally olive, anchovy, cheese and a sun-dried tomato on a stick!

The virgin mojito was good though.

As I enjoyed my mocktail I flicked through my guidebook trying to find someplace to go for dinner. And I drew a blank – I wasn’t really sure what I was in the mood for, but I wanted something which was pretty traditional and authentically Spanish. I left the hotel and had a quick look around the streets close to my hotel and the Mercado San Antón.

I had spotted a tapas spot which got rave reviews and earlier in the afternoon had been busy, but when I checked it out again it was totally empty. Not the atmosphere I was looking for really! I decided to head into town and see if anything caught my eye en route. And annoyingly nothing did! I suspect it’s probably because I was taking a route well-worn by tourists, but everywhere I saw for dinner just looked a bit lacklustre and touristy. Or dead. I did spy one bar / restaurant that was really rammed but it would have been standing room only and also I felt almost a bit intimidated about ordering somewhere that was so busy with locals. Probably a silly thought that, as I’m sure I would have managed!

Before I knew it I was back at Puerta del Sol. I had three things I wanted to purchase before I left Spain – and all of them were in El Corte Inglés. Although in two different branches.

By now it was late and I was hungry. It was almost half past eight. I decided just to go for a very easy but boring option and head up to the Gourmet Experience on the top floor of El Corte Inglés. As well as selling nice food, there are a couple of food court type restaurants. It was really busy but I managed to get a seat at the bar at La Maquina. I felt a bit annoyed with myself really that I hadn’t done a bit more research into where to eat on the last night of my holiday. But, I reflected, I had got a lot done and had a long day. And hopefully I’ll be back in Madrid one day!

My dinner really wasn’t very exciting. I ordered boactín donostiarra – a sandwich with tuna, peppers and anchovies and croquetas de jamón ibérico – croquettes with Iberian ham. They were both ok? Nothing special, but tasty enough.

The view during dinner wasn’t really anything to write home about!

Next it was time to make my purchases.

First was a Lékué lunchbox which I thought was just a perfect size for me. I make a salad most days for lunch, and I have a good collection of lunchboxes already, but thought this would be a good addition. You also couldn’t get it in this colour at home. With the tourist discount from a previous purchase on my El Corte Inglés tourist card, I got it for the bargain price of €6!

Next, a souvenir of my obsession with ECI – a tote bag for the bargain price of €1!

And last but not least, in the basement supermercado I picked up not just any old bag of dried chickpeas but PGI protected status chickpeas from Fuentesaúco. I use chickpeas all the time and find dried ones just always taste that much better than those from a can. Hopefully these will be even more delicious! They came in a little black fabric sack.

Annoyingly I saw a much better restaurant offering in the basement than where I’d just had dinner…

It was a lot calmer too!

Still a bit peckish after dinner I grabbed a spicy meat empanada from a stall beside the supermarket…

…and then started making my way back to the hotel.

Obviously the way I walked back took me past loads of lovely looking restaurants – any of which I would have happily eaten in!

I was kind of still kicking myself about my dinner.

I was really sad that my last day in Spain had come to an end. It’s such a relaxing, chilled place – and it doesn’t help that the sun shines a lot there. I can see why it holds such appeal for Brits looking to move abroad!

It was twenty past ten by the time I got back to my room. I celebrated the near-end of my holiday with one last bottle of Cacaolat and some chocolates left in my room by the hotel.

I turned in for the night – it would be an early start in the morning!