PlanetEye

I'm averse to contracting tour guides for anything, but when I looked at the number of innovative walking tours you can take in Madrid -- 2 years living here and I may just sign up for one!

They are cheap (not more than 4 Euros and cover the most important elements of the city within a few hours). Here are a few of the walking tour options you have:

Madrid Medieval Walk: This will take you around the historic part of the city, through the most important buildings city centre.

Walking tour planned according to history/monuments/plazas: Madrid Municipality provides a number of walking tours. Decide what you'd like to see and you'll find a guided walking tour that will take you there. You can find the same sort of tours at Ole Spain Tours.

Stephen Drake-Jones Historic Madrid Tours: He is an English ex-lecturer who has been living in Madrid for the last 30 years and now provides guided tours around the city.

Walking and Tapas Tour: If you want to make sure you are nibbling on local tapas while you are walking around the city, you might want to try a walking and tapas tour. Check out Adventurous Appetites and GoMadrid for details on such tours.

Madrid Walking Art Tour: Although I don't recommend this, should you need someone to walk you to and around Madrid's museums, you can check out tour company Euro Adventures which offers that.

Do a walking tour on your own! Should you want to wander on your own, but have a route, check out some Madrid walking routes mapped out by National Geographic and Frommer's. Just print them out and you'r ready to go!

It's got a corny name "Chess Cafe", it only serves fattening meals and humongous desserts, it boasts to have the "Best Orange Juice In Madrid".

I'm not sure if it's the best because every establishment that has fresh orange juice has good fresh orange juice, but what I can say is that Chess Cafe serves the largest glass of orange juice you'll get anywhere in Madrid!

Also, other than the big greasy home-made hamburgers they have there (which, unfortunately, they serve with chips out of a bag rather than french fries), they have the most elaborate and large fruit/chocolate/cream milkshakes and desserts that are meals in themselves. 

Since it's just down the road from my house, I go here quite often and surprisingly I've never seen any tourist here. So although it's designed total "guiri" style, it's pretty local always filled with young Spaniards from the neighbourhood. 

There are two branches in Madrid:

1) Paseo de Acacias, 25; closest metro - Acacias

Tel: +34-915303376 

2)Calle Conde de Peñalver, 64; closest metro - Diego de Leon

Tel: +34-914021536

So if you have that burger or dessert urge, try out Chess Cafe rather than visit a Burger King or a TGIF. 

Madrid's city centre is small enough to be seen on foot. Walking around is just awesome, but also time consuming. So, should you be short on time and don't feel like walking everywhere, you might want to consider renting a Segway for the day so you can "glide" across the city :-)

A Segway is a two-wheel-motor-transport device which you stand on like a step and have a handle to hold on to and balance the vehicle with. It's easy to operate and whole lot of fun.

The only downside to this is that it's pretty expensive: The first time it will cost you around €60 for 3 hours; the next time you can get a 50% discount. However, for a one time thing, it's worth it -- especially if you are in Madrid for a very short time or can't walk long distances for any reason. Here's a first hand report on a Madrid Segway Tour.

Here are links to the main companies in Madrid that rent out Segways. 

Madsegs

Segway Guided Tours

UrbanMovil

Seg on!!(Ok, bad joke).

Club Ananda is one of the coolest places to go to in Madrid. It's a bit expensive and a bit snobby, and often filled with many tourists, but the place is beautiful and has a variety of ambiences you can be part of, depending on your mood.

They have a full fledge discoteca that plays house music for the hardcore house-loving dancers. They also have another hall where they play more commercial music should you want to bop to YMCA, Santana or some R&B.

Although there is a cover charge fo €15 to enter, google "Club Ananda Madrid" and you will get the mobile numbers of many of the club's PR people, along with details as to how you can get in for free. Also, check their website before heading over, you may be able to print out free entrance passes.

On most "event" nights, the place is often free to enter from 23:00-1:30pm. The place only starts picking up at around 2pm -- and Thursday-Saturday, it's just packed. 

Their summer terrace is just beautiful -- on Sundays at the moment they have a Brazilian fiesta evening where the decor is happy colourful Brazil and the music is Samba/Latin chillout starting 11pm. 

Where: Avenida Ciudad de Barcelona 

Closest Metro: Atocha Renfe 

One of the craziest, most bizarre, and fun festivals of Spain is the Tomatina. Held in Buñol (Valencia province) every last Wednesday of August, the festival is attended by 1000's of people from Spain and all over the world. The town's population is 9000, and tourists that come to be part of this chaos are anywhere between 20,000-40,000. 

You probably guessed by now, as the name suggests, the festival involves tomatoes -- tonnes of them! Starting at 10am, the first round of trucks with tomatoes come to the town. Someone brave enough has to climb a greasy wooden pole about 3 floors high and cut loose a ham leg hanging from the top -- this is what marks the beginning of the festival.

After that, what else can you do with the tomatoes but throw them at each other! You have a whole hour to hit as many people as you want with as many tomatoes possible. Be sure to know that you are also a target for everyone there, so it's advised to go prepared with eye goggles (to prevent the tomato acid from stinging you eyes), and wear your swim suit. 

It's quite an aggressive festival. People are often drunk and will try to rip your clothes off. Don't think that the tomatoes are all soft and ripe; in fact the contrary -- most of them are raw and hard, and they huuurttt! You're supposed to crush the tomatoes before throwing them, but of course nobody does that.

The fight lasts an hour after which a few trucks drive in to hose everyone off with water. Then you normally end-up in a bar, followed by the beach. 

So if you are up for some squashy and ketchup-type-fight fun, from where you will come out wet in tomatoe puree, with a few bruises, red eyes and lots of friends -- do head over. It's one of those "once-in-a-time-have-to-do's" if you are in Spain at the time. 

As for the origins of this crazy fiesta -- noone really knows the story. The first such fight was in 1944 and in honour of the town's patron saints. 

It's very much a day trip from Madrid, so unless you feel like spending a night there, you can make it back comfortably before dinner time.  

From Madrid, by bus it takes about 3.5 hours and most of the bus operators will take you there (e.g. Auto Res). There are no trains to Buñol from Madrid, but you could go to Valencia, spend the night and go to Buñol in the morning. 

There are organised tours for the Tomatina, mainly from Valenica: Check out Go Spain! for a detail round-up of types of Tomatina Tours you can take. Any tourist information office in Madrid will have more details on Tomatina tours specifically from Madrid. 

Whatever you choose, be sure to book a bit in advance. With the sheer volume of people heading to the town, both transport and accomodation gets booked out quickly.

To wear: swim suit, flip flops, goggles, rubber gloves if you have sensitive hands.

Clothes to bring: something to change into, a towel. However, don't worry about this too much -- post the fight, you will find many vendors selling you cheap T-shirts and towels.

Come to Madrid and you cannot leave without visiting the Rastro. This is the city's (and apparently Europe's) largest flea market, that sells everything under the sun for unbelievably low prices. It's also known as the "thieve's market" for two reasons 1) a lot of the stuff is stolen, 2) it's one of the easiest places to be robbed!

It's on every Sunday morning from 10am-2:30pm and spreads along the areas of La Latina, Glorieta de Embajadores and Puerta de Toledo, with Ribera de Curtidores being it's heart, and ending at the Plaza de Cascorro.

Hundreds of stalls of clothes, shoes, furniture, DVD's, music, dress-jewellery, leather items, cutlery, plants, stationary, etc, etc are put up on the sides of the above mentioned streets; all together easily spanning an area of around 2km.

Originally, this market used to be a meat market and the name "Rastro" comes from the act of dragging the killed animals along the street as their blood leaves a trail. This meat market gradually expanded into being a full-fledge consumer market, one of the most popular in Europe. 

It's worth going to the Rastro even if you don't want to shop. The ambience is lively, there is music, and there are plenty of bars and terraces to sit around in and have beers.

Be very careful of pickpockets though. Just take a bit of money in your pocket, and nothing else!

Closest metro(s): Embajadores, La Latina.