Madrid bars with date-night energy
low lights, good drinks, no rush to leave.
Not the loudest rooms in the city — the ones where you can still hear each other at midnight.
Drinksupdated 5 min read
Researched
Javier Perez Montes · CC BY-SA 4.0
Madrid has no shortage of places to drink. It has a real shortage of places to drink where you can hear the person opposite you after eleven, which is a different and much more useful list.
The city's default setting is loud, bright and standing up, and that is genuinely one of the best things about it. This is the other list: the rooms you go to when the plan is conversation rather than volume.
Start on the street, not in a bar
Dos de Mayo at nine, before anyone has decided anything. Half of Malasaña is sitting on the ground in this square on any warm evening, and it is the best possible way to work out what kind of night you are actually in the mood for.
Then go somewhere with a door
Chueca is the most reliable grid in central Madrid for finding somewhere open, full and not deafening — and it is the easiest neighbourhood in the city to arrive at on your own without it being odd.
Wikier 2017 · CC0
The question is never where is open. It is where you can still hear each other at midnight.
The walk home counts
Gran Vía at one in the morning is the one piece of genuine spectacle this city has, and it is almost entirely wasted on people in taxis. Walk it west to east. It takes fifteen minutes and improves the evening retrospectively.
And if it has gone well enough that it is now five, the chocolaterías near Sol are open and full of people in exactly your situation.
Researched from published sources rather than a personal visit. Check before you go.
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