Compared to a normal night out in the US or the UK, a night out in Madrid, Spain, if you’re doing it a lo grande, is a marathon, it’s an endurance test. And if you don’t take precautions, you will be left (drunk) in the proverbial dust, while your Spanish (or more experienced expat) counterparts party on without you.
Here are some key points to consider:
Schedule
Pace Yourself! These are the words of wisdom may a Brit and Yank have ignored…to their peril!
You must understand: these folks do not share your sense of time. Take any meal time, opening time or closing time that you’re used to and move it back at least 2 or 3 hours - voila! - you are now in Spain time. In this mystical, temporally warped space, you cannot eat in proper restaurant between 4 and 8 (kitchens are just closed) and a midnight snack is really just “the last course”, as you finish dinner and head out to begin the night.
Also, take any normal activity (especially involving food and drink) and multiply the amount of time needed to complete that task by at least 1.5. The Spanish take their time (quite often while waiting on you as well, so chill out and be patient, it’s not like you need to tip them, so who cares, right?).
Special rules hold true for certain areas as well, like La Latina theater district (the area around the La Latina metro) on Sundays, where leisurely eating and drinking begins early (think 1pm) and carries on throughout the day. It’s not as late as on weekends though, cuz hey, it is Sunday, and apparently some people out there have jobs to go to.
Drinking
I repeat the above sentiment - Slow the f*** down! No really, this is Spain. If you think you’re gonna start putting them away at 8pm at the rate you do at home, where the local closes at 11, you will probably not make it through the 8 to 10 hours of Madrid nightlife waiting to dazzle you. You will pass out, and you will miss out. From what I have personally experienced working in bars here, it is quite possible for a group of Spaniards to sit with one round of drinks for an hour or more. I know, for many of us crippled by the Anglo-American drinking culture such a thing may seem physically impossible, but its ok, they fill the time, often with tapas and even some good conversation.
Food
Resist the temptation to eat right when the kitchens open around 8pm. Have a snack and hold out for a proper meal at 10 or 11, remember, that fuel has to last you for several more hours. If you want to try a particularly Spanish dish that is an effective and economical stomach-liner before a night of partying, make sure you gobble down some tortilla - it’s cheap, it’s tasty, and it’s a big brick of potato held together with egg, a coat of armor for your tummy (also a hangover classic, incidentally).
If you’re going in for the long haul (out until 4-7am) you might want to refuel at some point. At various places in the bar districts -like Sol and Malasaña- you will often find enterprising Chinese merchants on the streets hawking sodas, beers, bocadillos (sandwiches) and if you’re really lucky fried rice or chow mein from less-than-legal stands made out of cardboard boxes. They appear after about 4am, and that fried rice has been the salvation of many a late-nighter (and surely a curse for an unlucky few - its not exactly inspected by health regulators)
Also good for the end of the night, beginning of the morning top-ups: many cafes around Sol (like Caffe Roma, or Cafe&Te) open at around six. So you can enjoy the odd mix of bartenders having their after-work breakfast, and partiers slurringly ordering that last vodka tonic right next to a little old lady having her morning coffee and croissant. It’s a special time of day, but if you don’t play your cards right, you won’t last to see it. And that would be a shame.
Photo of Madrid disco originally posted by fluzo
Topic: How to Tuesday |
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Tags: Madrid, nightlife
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About the author
Karina came to Madrid from Berkeley, California to teach English for a year...that was four years ago! After finishing her degree in Political Theory (which prepared her perfectly for a career in...ummm....reading?) she had decided to improve her Spanish and see a bit of the world. Teaching English didn't pan out so she worked in a bar, then translated for sketchy businessmen, worked in a bookstore, and presented an online television news program before she decided to strike out on her own and try some freelancing (which she had the bad judgment to decide to do in the month of July, which meant she did very little writing and quite a lot of poolside lounging). She's lived all over this great city - the silver lining to the otherwise bleak storm cloud of having had 9 apartments in less than 4 years - and is now settled smack in the center. She's mainly interested in politics-specifically immigration policy and her country's recent foreign policy decisions. Other current activities and interests include: reading gut wrenchingly depressing novels, cooking for large groups of hungry people, occasionally writing on her blog, interning for CNN's Madrid bureau, learning a bit about video production, and improving her French.
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