Date: November 2nd, 2026 4:54 PM Author: Debunked antisemitic trope
if you avoid the actual center, the city is amazing.
so avoid gran via, Sol, plaza mayor, mercado de san miguel. all of it, just dont even go there. everything north of plaza espana is cool and should still be affordable. cant really give tips on restaurants bc i dont know what still exists.
i do know that some places like https://restaurantetenconten.com/ still exist on the other part of town. tell me where you are staying
been to spain twice - once for a little more than two months. it was around christmas time, and it was late 2021, and i encountered virtually no tourists in some of the smaller towns. more than once i was the only one in the hostel, and in one instance, i had to let myself in as there was no staff. i enjoyed it much more than my second trip to spain.
i crossed the border from evora, pt, on a bus to caceres. go to caceres if you can. it has an extremely well-preserved medieval section which was used as a set in GOT, which isn't the reason i went there, but it speaks to what you can expect when you go. like so many old towns there are different sections that were built during vastly different periods, so you get some variety. it's in extremadura, which is rough, arid country where a lot of the conquistadors came from. i recall the town being sort of high up, and the air was nice.
i could tell you a lot more, but as a general message i'd urge you to find some smaller towns rather than the typical big cities. this usually applies to travel anywhere, but especially in spain, which is so heavily touristic.
one more celebrated town i've been to twice is ronda. touristic, especially in some parts, but worth a visit because of the grandeur of its 300-year-old bridge and the layers of history. also worth seeing some of the surrounding sites, like an old roman town on a hill that you can barely see in the distance, or a cave with prehistoric paintings. very few tourists go to these places.
orson welles lived there, i found out.
haven't been to madrid yet, but as for sevilla, make sure to check out the triana neighborhood.