When you come to Madrid to learn Spanish in Cronopios, you will have plenty of time to do many other things. Today I want to talk about 5 day trips from Madrid, in Madrid, meaning you won´t even have to travel outside the region. Beautiful places that you can reach with public transport in around 45 minutes and are worth a visit. Just have in mind that there are much more options that you can explore once you are here.

 

Aranjuez

Home of one of the Royal Palaces of Spanish Monarchy, Aranjuez is a city in the southern end of the region of Madrid. The Royal Palace and Gardens were declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO more than twenty years ago. You may visit the whole site or just enjoy the Gardens, preferably on spring or during fall, take a stroll through the lovely parterre designed to please the royalty more than five hundred years ago. No one, except for the Royal Family members and their entourage, was allowed to enter the place until the 18th century.

There also museums, churches and the train station and of course good places to eat, like El Corral de la Abuela.

Arrival from Madrid: you can easy reach Aranjuez from Madrid, by train or bus. Trains to Aranjuez leave every 30 minutes from Atocha Station, right in the city center. And buses depart from Estación Sur. Ticket prices are around 5€ in both transports.

If you are looking for another kind of experience, take a look at el Tren de la Fresa, the Strawberry Train. This historical train takes you through the first railway built in Madrid, back in 1851, and is an immersive touristic and cultural experience.

San Lorenzo del Escorial

Located at the mountain side in the northwest of Madrid region, this small town grew beside the famous Royal Monastery of El Escorial, built at the end of 16th century. The Monastery is not only that but also a Library, a School, a Museum and a Royal Palace. Declared World Heritage in 1984. The full visit may take 5 hours, so you can spend the day there! My advice: if you visit the place in fall or winter, wear a thick coat. Inside is colder than outside.

The rest of the town is lovely, there are many hotels and hotels. There´s a coffee bar, the Cafetín Croche, famous for its classic decorative style. If you fancy something different, try to book a dinner at Montia, a small and gorgeous place that has a Michelin star but is affordable and simply fantastic.

You can get there by bus from Moncloa station, its almost an hour trip but very cheap (not even 5€). The train from Atocha takes a little bit more than an hour.

Chinchón

If you are tired of Royal sites, Chinchón’s Plaza Mayor is an example of popular architecture. The first houses with arcades and balconies were built in the 15th century, and it was completely closed in the 17th century. Chinchón is a small town in the southeast of the region, and also the name of a popular liquor in Spain and a card game that most Spanish families have played at some point, so enjoy the sound of this very Spanish word and its meanings.

US film director Wes Anderson, shot his last film in Chinchón. There are the remains of a Castle and a nice walk. Famous for its garlics, take some with you and practice Spanish cuisine at home!

If you like it so much as to spend the night, there´s a Parador there. This kind of establishments, both hotels and restaurants, are in historical and cultural cities and towns throughout Spain.

Alcalá de Henares

The third biggest city of Madrid region, after Madrid and Móstoles, is also a place that´s been inhabited for almost two thousand years. Located at the east of the region, its renown comes from being the place where Miguel de Cervantes was born and the headquarters of Alcalá University, founded in 1499. The city was declared World Heritage by the UNESCO in 1998, it´s full of museums, buildings and monuments if you are interested in a cultural and historical visit. One of them is Miguel de Cervantes Birthplace Museum.

Stay for lunch in the Pollo de Alcalá, a place famous for the locals where you can enjoy a delicious and rather cheap roast chicken.

During the first days of October you may find the Cervantino market, which is a medieval market but also a local festivity that remembers Cervantes time, with parades, activities and much more.

You can get there by train from Atocha or by bus from Avenida de América.

Manzanares El Real

My last proposal is a small town in the northwest of the region. Not a World Heritage Site though it has its own castle, built in the 15th century and in a quite a good condition nowadays.

Manzanares El Real is in the side of the mountain, in Guadarrama Mountains, and the place you should start your route if you want to explore La Pedriza, a very famous part of the mountain for climbers and hikers.

Get there by bus from Plaza de Castilla.

Hope you enjoy this 5 day trips from Madrid city, I´ve chosen 5 places inside Madrid region but next time I can introduce you 5 more places outside the region worth the day visit. There´s no beach in Madrid, as they say, but there are plenty of places to go.

Some of our students come to our Spanish school by bicycle. Madrid has its own public bicycle scheme called biciMAD, it’s not particularly expensive, but more for incidental use, and it’s not always easy for foreigners to use because of registration issues and accepting foreign bank cards. Instead getting a second hand bike is your best bet, there are a range of shops in town, often cheapest is to use a website like eBay or Wallapop.

Admittedly cycling in Madrid is not ideal if you live further afield because of the heavy traffic in the large multi lane roads between the ‘manzanas’, but in the centre it’s actually very useful, better than public transport because of the narrow streets and the unevenly distributed metro routes.

One really nice thing to try is the bike route along the river, where there used to be a highway there is now a lovely park, with a great bike path! Cycle along the river down south and visit one of Madrid’s most overlooked attractions, the amazing Matadero centre.

Trying to be trendy and having a fixie or an old Dutch style bike is not the most practical for cycling in Madrid, to take on the hills and valleys that do exist around town make sure you get one with a good number of gears, more than 3 at least. In terms of economics, if you ride your bike every day to the school, and perhaps a couple of further trips on the weekends instead of using public transport, and you have paid 150 Euro for a decent bike, then after a couple of months you will have already recuperated your investment. The pay-off though in terms of exercise, experiencing street life, and generating loads of happy brain chemicals is of course priceless!

What is there not to love: with its back against the botanical gardens, little old wooden cabins stuffed to the rafters with books on every theme you can imagine, from 19th century erotic prints to a first edition of Harry Potter in English. Located on a sloping pedestrian street which leads from the Retiro to Atocha station, the Cuesta de Moyano book market, though perhaps not as ancient as the Rastro market in Lavapies, has existed here for a century.

You could spend an entire afternoon browsing here, taking your time to just enjoy the quiet atmosphere. Because that’s what this place is all about, a place where little changes, an oasis of tranquillity in the eye of the storm that is Madrid with its traffic and flowing currents of people.

Each of the booths has its speciality, even though most of them have a general literature section as well. Some of the specialities include a focus on Latin American authors whose works cannot be found elsewhere in Spain in booth 17, or booth 27 focusses on books published 50 years ago or more, whereas booth 16 has specialized in books with strange and funny covers. The market also hosts many cultural events, to see what’s on these days, to know more about each booth’s speciality or even to see interviews with the shop owners, see here.

For those in doubt about the ruinous effect of literature, starting from the market you can cross Calle de Alfonso XII and enter the Retiro park through the Puerta del Angel Caido. Here you proceed up the hill to a height of 666 meters above sea level (fact!), which is no coincidence because here you’ll find the only statue of the devil in a European capital, a dramatic statue of Lucifer crowning the so-called fountain of the fallen angel. Find a bench here to sit with your new book and contemplate on the strangeness of life. Whether on your lunch break or after class, the Cuesta de Moyano book market is a little gem of a place less than 5 minutes walk from the school and deserves an unhurried visit.

Alright, you are thinking how to choose the best Spanish school in Madrid! You have already shown considerable wisdom in your choice of location, let’s stay on a roll and see some tips for choosing a Spanish school in Madrid. Now you may be wondering why this Spanish school in Madrid would offer advice on choosing schools, and how neutral this advice can be but we’re just going to say straight up this article will definitely contain some subjective opinions; actually, you might as well stop reading now, we are the best.

 

But seriously, there simply is a whole range of different schools out there, and some may claim to appeal equally well to everyone, but in reality some will be better suited to some than others. We are a school managed by a team of teachers, our main goal is to acquire a fair wage and be happy doing what we love; teaching and managing our own school in the best way. We are not going to make lists of schools, but more specifically what to watch out for, and we will explain where we fit in the picture.

You should check out if the Spanish school is accredited by the Instituto Cervantes. This means that the courses meet the highest standards of quality. This factor is essential, but Keep it in mind that there are a lots of accredited Spanish schools.

Some of the schools cater to larger numbers from specific countries, or some of the bigger chains will be geared towards language holidays for teenagers for instance. A good variety is what is generally considered best for learning effectively, and that is what you will find here at Cronopios. If you cannot always continue to converse with classmates in your own language, or if your course group contains people who can’t speak English then this is actually a plus, you will need to use your Spanish when talking to them whether in class or during the after school activities. This might sound daunting, but in fact these people share your level after all, you will find it is easiest to talk to them without feeling self-conscious. When you first realise that you can communicate with the people around you this is a real pleasure.

There is of course a range of sizes, from smaller schools like ourselves with 9 classrooms, to ones that are part of large international chains, offering different languages in locations all over the planet.

Pay attention when doing your research; some of the larger schools act like some hotels do on travel sites, they pushily market themselves, they consistently do very well in search engine scoring but this is the result of a lot of chasing students for reviews, and even offering freebies in exchange for better reviews. In other words, some schools game the system. The fact that they have the best ratings and are at the top of search engine results is, shock horror surprise!, not the result of simply being the best at what they do. Be critical when looking at ratings, just as you would elsewhere.

Perhaps most important to many people, price is unavoidably a major factor in one’s calculations. There are schools out there that come up as the best in search results, and then cost the most, but this is not a real guarantee of the best quality, as explained above. Cronopios consistently offers prices below average for intensive courses because of our commitment to affordable education.

Even though they do not offer intensive courses, the cheapest option is actually to take lessons from the official government language schools. But they have limited capacity and at times the quality can vary. Furthermore, if you do not speak Spanish, actually getting registered can be a challenge as the process is not exactly streamlined and there are no English speakers among the admin staff. All in all though, if you do get a place, and a good teacher then this can definitely be a very good option.

Again, be wary, there are private schools which offer bargain bin prices on their courses but these will often be of low quality, will not deliver on promises such as the number of teaching hours per week, or employ teachers under exploitative conditions, which takes us to our next consideration:

You might be surprised to find this aspect listed here, but if you consider the effect some aspects of tourism and travel on have on Madrid and its people it actually makes sense. Spanish language courses are a hugely lucrative business and yet the Spanish as a foreign language teachers sector is rife with bad working conditions. In other words, your teachers are actually quite likely to be working for near minimum wage, without decent contracts and are generally expected to work unpaid over hours if they want to keep their jobs. This school, Cronopios Idiomas, was specifically created as a teacher’s cooperative, it was founded by our teachers a few years ago because of these specific inequalities and injustices in the language school sector in Madrid and Spain in general.

If you want to be careful about choosing a Spanish school in Madrid you will have found that it isn’t always easy. First of all read the reviews written by students. Once you find yourself here in Madrid you might find it easier to make choices by visiting some of the schools, or asking around at one of the language exchange evenings that take place on every weekday in bars across the city.