“Artemis” by Rembrandt. One of the masterpieces on display at the Prado.

The Museo Nacional del Prado is Madrid’s most famous museum. Opened to the public in 1819, today it boasts a world-class collection of European artwork, including more than 7,000 works spanning from the 12th century to the early 19th century. At any time, about 1,300 pieces of art are on display.

The museum started out as a royal collection of art, and visitors can still get a feel for the varying tastes of monarch’s past. The Prado is especially acclaimed for works by Spanish painters, including Velazquez, El Greco, and Goya, as well as “foreigners” Titian, Bosch, Rubens, and Rembrandt.

Visiting the Prado Museum…

The museum is open daily from 9 AM to 8 PM, and closed on Mondays.

General admission to the museum costs €6 if tickets are bought at the museum’s ticket office. Advance tickets (allowing you to skip the line) can be purchased online through the Prado’s website, for €9.

…for free

However, the Prado offers free admission at the end of every day for two hours (three on Sunday). From Tuesday through Saturday, the museum’s doors are wide open from 6 PM to 8 PM, and on Sunday from 5 PM to 8 PM.

With so much to see, we’d suggest visiting the museum multiple times for free. Popping in to tackle one artist or one section of the museum is not only doable in two hours, but could help prevent “museum burn-out.”

Tip: Check out the museum’s recommended list of 15 masterpieces on the Prado’s website. This virtual tour offers historical insights into the collection’s most famous paintings.

Also see: our list of budget tips for Madrid and our reviews of budget hotels in Madrid.

Next stop: Munich! 

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Hitting the town in Madrid doesn’t have to rip into your bank balance faster than a speeding bull. As in all good cities, nighttime budget-friendly options abound!

Here’s our cheapo guide to living it up for a night in Spain’s vibrant capital.

Get in the mood

Start out near central Plaza de Chueca, an area where there’s no shortage of trendy clubs and restaurants, many of which are cheapo-friendly. Considered to be the premiere gay area of  Madrid, Chueca and its main square are full of people hangin’ out in cafes and bars almost every night. In fact, if you hang out in the square long enough, chances are decent that you’ll make some new friends and find yourself involved in some last-minute plans.

Dinner

While daytime lunch specials certainly abound around Chueca (a good midday meal can be had for between €5-8), it can be a bit challenging to keep dinner prices low. We’d recommend checking out the trendy and delish Bazaar Restaurant, located just south of Plaza de Chueca on C/Libertad, 21. The menu runs the gammut from goat cheese salad to Thai-style noodles with grilled meats, and can be digested with ease for under €25.

And a movie…

Next stop: Filmoteca’s Cine D’Oré (Santa Isabel, 3, next to Metro Anton Martin) where the Spanish film archives are housed and any number of old greats from Ingmar Bergman to Luis Buñuel are showcased in one of three “session” rooms. Tickets are €2 for students, €2.50 for non-students.

And then drinks to discuss…

When the movie lets out, try Café Central, located about three blocks away, at Plaza del Angel, 10. The jazz bar has a bubbly atmosphere with reasonably-priced drinks, delicious snacks (pinchos y tostas €1.20), and even fixed-price meals (€10 for two courses). 

And if you decide to spring for tickets to the evening’s jazz performance, they’ll throw in a free drink ticket. We don’t know about you, but we always love getting an added bibbidy for our buck.

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Recently launched: MAPMagazine, an online publication that devotes itself to Madrid’s Anglophone expats and visitors. The magazine, which feels to us like a cross between the NYT and Facebook, is a useful compendium of news and calendar items. There are lists of free (and cheap) things to do, restaurant reviews, and coverage of the capital’s nightlife scene.

We’re impressed by the breadth of material covered and by the absence of snarky expat snivel. You know what we’re talking about. So if you’re hankering for it, go elsewhere.

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Photo by punch_for_lunch3

In the Chamartín train station in Madrid, Playmobil will set up extensive dioramas for the nostalgic public in its third annual convention in Spain, April 20 through 22.

For only €2, adults can rediscover the imaginative plastic dolls, toy pirate ships, gas stations, helicopters, and the rest of Playmobil’s microcosmic world that enveloped your childhood so lovingly not too many years ago. Spain has taken a special liking to Playmobil with its own confederation of aficionados.

Activities for children as well as those who were children yesterday are planned. These include collectible stores and workshops to learn how to fine-tune characters.

Convention hours: April 20, 2007 from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m.; April 21 from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m.; and April 22 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

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Photo by kevinturner

Internet Cafés are so last year. Unfortunately, foreigners and locals alike discover free Internet access in Madrid only by word of mouth. Take Spain’s mega store Corte Ingles for example. Most people don’t know there’s free Wi-Fi in all of its cafeterias. Our favorite for the best views of the city: its most central location on Plaza del Callao, 2 (Telephone: +34-91-37-98-000).

Here’s a short list of other in-style central city havens where globetrotting passersby can plug into Madrid’s free Wi-Fi synergy.

Isoleé in Chueca is a hip café/restaurant/store all rolled together like a sushi roll. Plug in for 40 minutes with the purchase of a drink.

Café Faborit in Sol is too cool for techies but perfect for worldly hipsters on the go. Get your password with purchase of a drink.

Heladería Grangrossi in La Latina is the most refined café for Internet yuppies. Savor dark espressos and the city’s best gelato while lounging in white leather chairs. There are two other locations to choose from as well.

Cafeteria Santander in Alonso Martinez (Plaza de Santa Barbara, 4; Metro: Alonso Martinez) is known as Madrid’s free Wi-Fi pioneer. It is a sprawling low-cost café with booths and a down-home feel. It’s best in the morning for fresh squeezed orange juice, croissants, and excellent service.

Plaza Colón, best known as Madrid’s premier park for skaters, is also a hotspot for Web surfers. During spring and summer months, take a blanket and enjoy a romantic rendezvous with your laptop in Salamanca’s best urban park. Your ESSID code is BNE-BG. Take the Metro to Colón.

Classy hotels like Hotel Moderno and Hotel Opera offer free Internet in the lobbies and cafeterias.

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photograph courtesy of david_fisher

There’s a bar across the street from our apartment in Madrid. The joint serves chicken, though we’d never order it. It’s the only bar on the street open late—by which we mean through the night.

In the wee hours, lurking locals duck under its half-closed garage door, emerging moments later.

It’s a safe bet that their orders don’t have anything to do with chicken.

We don’t mind though because every so often, the pony-tailed Gypsy owner hosts a wedding party, a birthday party, or, as in last night’s case, a bachelor party.

On party nights, we don’t sleep. The parties flow out of the bar. The narrow street we call home plays venue to the best Flamenco tablao in the city. And we have box seats.

The offbeat stomping, half-tempo clapping, raspy masculine voice, and a guitar that jumps cords like Paco de Lucia all beat the hell out of counting sheep.

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Anyone who’s anybody is currently walking the floors of ARCO, Madrid’s most prestigious international contemporary arts fair. ARCO attracts the best international artists, highbrow art editors, connoisseurs, and collectors from Spain and around the world, and is being held from February 15 through 19, 2007.

Of course, if you’re no one who’s nobody and can’t afford the €40 entrance fee just to get through those abhorrently overpriced doors, perhaps you’re more like us. And what are we up to? Well thanks for asking. We’re in the kitchen attempting—and failing—to flip a Spanish tortilla like a pancake.

It turns out the Spanish tortilla is an art form itself, more complex than anything on display at ARCO and much easier to digest. The perfect blend of egg, potato, and virgin olive oil is a Spanish masterpiece. Any good Spaniard would put up a fist to defend his or her mother’s tortilla.

The secret? Add an extra egg, double the salt, and don’t worry about complex interpretations. The Spanish tortilla speaks for itself.

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Elizabeth Gorman’s ghostly capture of a photograph of Hemingway and Gelhorn 

The Cervantes Institute’s current exhibition, “Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War,” documents the lives of journalists in Spain during the War. Big hitters Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell—both of whom took up arms—were just a few members of the A-list writers’ club whose harrowing work is on display in its original format.

Leave it to Hemingway, the only one with a car, to woo his (third) wife on the Spanish battlefield. Martha Gelhorn, an American journalist covering the war for Collier’s, was one of a handful of international journalists and writers who ended up at the Hotel Florida, just off the capital’s Gran Vía and a walk from the grandiose Telefonica building, where foreign correspondents filed their dispatches.

Despite the shootouts and aerial bombings, Madrileño life went on as normal during the Civil War. Just down the street from the institute is Museo Chicote (Gran Vía 12. +34-915-326-737), perhaps the most famous bar in the world—voted MTV’s best—where a good menú del dia can be had for just €10. Here the historic pack of journalists gathered, drank, and waited out the fuselage like rain on Gran Vía.

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