7 Things You Should NEVER Do In Madrid!

so for the first five years of living in madrid i gave nightly tapas tours here through the center i would meet my guests here by the statue of this queen isabelle the second who was the victim of a lot of unfair rumors probably unfair including that she was a nymphomaniac and over the course of those early devour tours i really learned what the most common mistakes are that people make when they come and visit madrid and look while there's not a lot of tourism right now as you can see it's pretty quiet when you do finally get here i really hope that these tips will help you have a more authentic and more enjoyable and a more memorable time in the city all right you ready yali oh wait for you okay first stop plato yoli speaking as a mother delegate why should you or should you eat in the plaza mayor no no way why not because their restaurants are average and i feel you're gonna get ripped off okay mainly so there's a thing my dad always taught me and he said never eat in a restaurant that has a great view and the logic makes sense right the the food's not going to be good potentially or it's going to be overpriced because the place gets lazy and relies on the view and it's kind of like that in the platinum york i wish i could recommend that you come and have a meal here but it's just going to be overpriced and most likely average that's just the reality if you look on google there's all these one-star reviews of people who have kind of eaten here there's even a guy who ate pizza if there's anything worse than eating in the flat in my yard it's ordering pizza but there is one good place a place that i would recommend it's called los gallaios and it's over in that corner so you can check that one out but hang on i have another recommendation which is having calamari sandwich calamares in la campana very also very close by over there straight yeah yeah i mean having a calamari sandwich is a super local thing to do and actually you can buy it there and come and sit in the platinum yard and have it there that's what that's what the madrilleno elenios like yoli do so if you do want to enjoy the plata major it makes sense this place is beautiful and historic then come and order a glass of wine and maybe have a cafe con leche in the pata mayor there is nothing quite like a relaxing cup of cafe con leche in plaza mayor you're gonna pay a little more but how long can they get it and while i've got you the other thing my father taught me is never eat in a revolving restaurant you're not gonna have that issue in madrid presently but keep that in mind okay now there's another place alongside here that's super famous for eating in madrid you'll have heard all about it but it has to be approached with caution and that's going to be tip number two once we've finished our cafes con leche in the plaza mayor stop so look the mercado san miguel behind me this beautiful old market that's now a gourmet tapas hall is one of the most popular places for tourists to visit and eat tapas when they come to madrid and i get it the place is it's awesome it's fun but it's just not that authentic and it's kind of expensive so i think it's a great place to kind of kick off in some ways your tapas adventure in madrid but it shouldn't be the end point there are some good places in there there's a great vermouth place there's a great wine bar but a lot of the cooked tapas just kind of isn't that great i actually made a video about it about how to tackle a medical sami girl which you can check out below so it's closed at the moment because of covert it will open again so yeah when you're here get your sea legs there but then move on and dive into the authentic tapas bars here in the capital so my father is an intelligent cultured man but when he first came to madrid i remember him saying to me that he felt daunted by the idea of going to the prado he kind of wasn't looking forward to it that much this is the most famous art museum in the world right behind me but i totally get it i met a lot of people on tour who were here and i felt like they were going to the big three art galleries here the prado the tees and the reina sofia almost out of a sense of obligation like that's what you do in madrid and look we're not all art experts and and sometimes you're standing in front of paintings and you're looking at them and it's a bit boring because you don't really know what you're looking at so first of all i give you permission to have a culturally rich time in madrid and not go to the galleries right but i think you should go to the big three and here's why so the prado has wonderful art by velasquez and goyal and so much more but those are great spanish artists the reyna sofia has picasso and it has you know images from the spanish civil war and the tsun just kind of has a whole bunch of other stuff so they're really really great but if you're gonna go there's two things i would suggest do some research first don't just kind of stumble in and try and see everything you know there are apps there are books there's blogs online i actually wrote a city guide this year which helps you have a super authentic and local time in madrid and it includes how to tackle the big three art galleries i'll link to that down below the other thing is consider doing a tour we did a tour when my parents came and it just kind of opened it up so we have the prado bottine tour at devour tours where you go to the prado and you go and eat the most the oldest restaurant in the world there's also a great company i know the guides who give out to us and i'll link those guys down below as well extra tip here from me be selective about the artist and maybe the styles that you want to see and don't try to do all three museums in the same day even done to all three museums no pressure so i'm a huge proponent of this one if you're staying in the city center don't just jump in an uber or a taxi walk everywhere everything is in walking distance in the center the streets are narrow gorgeous the journey will actually take you longer if you're in a taxi so my advice just go ahead and walk it's not only cheaper it's also healthier maybe you had one too many glasses of wine you're gonna burn the alcohol off by just walking home so the other thing i would say is the public transport system here in madrid is really efficient and really effective and cheap and fast so the metro particularly for getting around the center also the bus system so i would definitely use that that would even be faster than walking or taking an uber right totally yeah and would you say yoli speaking as a woman like walking around the evening do you feel safe it is safe it feels safe i mean no matter what time it is you will feel safe because there's always people around yeah totally so yeah people walking everywhere locals walking okay the next one follow me i want to show you guys something so you see up here there's an issue with paella in madrid you know these look delicious and beautiful beautiful photography so here's the rule the quality of a paella is inversely proportionate to the quality of the paella advertising so if you see a beautiful little kind of flyer on a table or beside a restaurant a little sandwich board that has these perfect paella photos that's going to be a frozen paella they're serving you look if you took all the paellas that have served to tourists in madrid probably 50 percent are frozen so terrible 40 are just bad and 10 are good so you really have to know where to look right you don't want to get this stuff and why is it hard to get a good pay in madrid well the thing is it's a regional dish it's from valencia so you actually have to go to a rice restaurant or a valencian restaurant to get a great authentic one and it should take at least 20 minutes for them to prepare it if it comes out in five minutes it was probably frozen so i'm gonna drop some links in the description below of legit places to get pay in madrid so you don't end up with a frozen one while you're here so i think some people sometimes think that in madrid the good tapas bars are the ones where you can have you know three glasses of wine and you've had your full dinner because of all the mountains of free tapas you'll get you know with your drink look you do get a free something to nibble on in madrid here we got some olives that's quite typical you know sometimes you'll get a piece of cheese on bread or some chorizo or a couple of bucket honors but you're not gonna get a full meal and actually if you do get a full meal with your tapa sometimes that can be a bad sign a sign of lower quality there's a place called le tigre which just gives mountains of food with your drink which is great if you're on a budget but it's not the best place to eat in madrid so i think shift your thinking a little bit on that actually another word for the tapa in madrid is el aperitivo the aperitif something to go to drink to open your appetite and the tapas culture just changes all over spain and granada that's where you can have dinner with each of your drinks but not here so in that city guide to madrid that i mentioned that i'll link below i also demystify the whole madrid tapas scene for you because really what you want to be doing is ordering raciones that's what these are and not trying to survive off the tapas because you're going to starve okay while we're on tapas guys if you ever get this or see this on the menu this is secreto iberico and it's one of the juiciest cuts of pork i want to kind of give you the confidence to not sweat the surly service that you're going to get in madrid see in this city there's two types of servers from the waiters you know there's bad service like there is all over the world that's one thing but then there's castifel service and castita is a word that means traditional or authentic and what that means in the context of a madrid bar is they won't be necessarily smiling all the time or like hi i'm michael i'll be your waiter tonight or full of kind of pleases and thank yous but that doesn't mean it's bad service no i should say these guys at la casa del abuelo they are not like that they're super friendly but yoli why is that why is it like that well i mean they need to be efficient right and so there's no time for pleasant reason like you know thank yous and pleases those damn pleasantries exactly to me when a waiter is good when a good malena waiter is there for you they feel like they are reading your mind they're like wizards you know actually when i started giving tapas tours here and i wasn't used to that kind of service sometimes i would think that they all hated me the the tapas bar owners that i would take people to on the tours i would come home to yoli and i was sad and i was like they don't like me the tapas bar owners don't love me ollie all right darling you will you will become used to them you know you don't love them no they're just mean to me no the way they are the way they serve is that way they need to be quick you know you'll get used to them but it's not that i just i've learned to kind of expect it now and i've learned to understand it and they just they need to be efficiently to get everyone served as quickly as possible okay look i know it's a weird time right now guys but if you're thinking of coming to madrid in the future check out that city guide that i've mentioned a couple times madrid revealed i'll link to it below it's got off the beaten path tapas bars it's got great neighborhood guides it's pretty much my 10 years living in madrid distilled down into one beautiful guide i'm quite proud of it and if you're worried it might be out of date because of covert don't worry once things open up again i'm going to give it an update where necessary and i'll send out the update to you for free so cheers from madrid salute and uh i don't know what else do i say don't do the wrong things and do all the right things