La Latina on a Sunday morning: it’s something you need to do.
I tried to go every Sunday morning, but only actually made it four times in 6 months (hi, Saturday night clubbing).
9 AM breakfast: pop into the restaurant next to Hotel Puerta de Toledo. The little eatery (whose name isn’t memorable) is a dime-a-dozen place, but its in La Latina at your exit (Puerta de Toledo on Line 5).
The hotel and this little place share a section of the round-about street that surrounds the actual Puerta de Toledo. Look for the Hotel, you’ll find this place. Sit down, enjoy and AM gin & soda and a croissant. Watch passers-by.
10 AM Puerta de Toledo: the metro stop that you’ll need to get off to go to El Rastro, the HUGE open air market (think flea market, not farmer’s market). This is where you’ll head after breakfast.
El Rastro is SPRAWLING and covers block after block of the La Latina neighbourhood. Booths usually go up at about 10 AM and come down sometime between 1-3PM, and they’re only open Sundays.
At one of the Puerta de Toledo metro exits there is a library and a row of cherry blossom trees, follow the trees back into their little alcove and you’ll come across a booth with an expansive collection of antiques, very cool to look through. From that point, you can just follow the booths back.
11 AM: By this point you’ve wandered pretty deep into La Latina, past all the touristy booths at the mouth of El Rastro, into the parts of the market that have actually unique stuff.
The crammed book shops and jammed places packed with treasures from Morocco and beyond were my favourites.
There was a shop full of south east Asian items: jade bracelets, obviously old statues of Buddah (not something you med major bestie bought at a TJ Maxx), intricately woven tapestries so expensive your breakfast threatens to bubble back up.
There was a place with old little machines (think projectors, cameras, the like) that had a Russian alphabet, ahem Cyrillic, typewriter from the 50s.
One tiny tienda that looked like a Sultan’s treasure trove was particularly amazing. Arabesque trinkets can be found at a lot of El Rastro booths and shops, but few are authentic nor good quality. This shop has amazing rugs, beautifully crafted frames with huge mirrors in them, and little wonderful tchotchkes that you’ll wish you had another 15 lbs of luggage space to cart them home.
That’s what I loved most about El Rastro. Not only getting lost (quite literally) between all the booths and people, but stumbling into little treasure troves.
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My dad spent a little over 24 hrs in Madrid with me on a layover for a work trip, and he loved the market, too. He ended up getting a vintage pocket knife for my uncle at a stand that was overflowing with pocket knives. At a lot of the over-stocked booths its easy to get overwhelmed with how much crud there is and you don’t find the cool stuff hidden in the mess. This is why I just found shops devoted to a particular thing and looked through those, but my dad was happy he dug through that little stand. It’s got something for every type of shopper.
In recent years El Rastro has gotten popular again as the La Latina neighbourhood up ticks again. There for a hot minute the area was one of the rougher parts of the city, but with the dip in the Spanish economy this area has seen the resurgence of Spanishness in a manner. El Rastro is something very specifically Madrid, and madrileños are fond of things just their own, so now you get to benefit from that.
However, because of the tourist popularity of El Rastro in a not-as-nice neighbourhood, pick pockets are common, so maybe don’t carry a purse or a backpack, and instead keep cash and phones in front pocket or inside jacket pockets. If you do carry a purse, keep in pulled in front of you (purse recommendations here).
Here is a (pretty cheesy) video that mentions the market
<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/54434674″>EL RASTRO (Diario de un viaje)</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/drakkarhd”>DRAKKAR HD(www.drakkarhd.com)</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
Get Lost 