What’s nice about visiting a foreign city for a second time, is that you really see it then.

The ‘must do’s” have already been done, the main sights have already been seen, and your itinerary feels a little bit more free because of it.

You’ve seen the ‘best’, now you can unlock the rest.

It didn’t take long for Madrid to feel familiar, as my taxi wove around the city towards the La Latina district where my best friend now lives for a lot of the year. I recognised the impressive gates of Retiro Park opposite the big arch of Puerta del Alcalá where I’d had the custom tourist photo taken back in 2022. You know the one, that stilted pose where you clasp your hands in front of you and smile awkwardly at the stranger taking the photo, before having to be polite and pretend that what they took was great even though they basically decapitated you in the picture, and subtly ask somebody else so you can repeat this whole sorry process again and again.

“I wouldn’t mind repeating a trip to Retiro, actually”, I thought to myself, comforted by the fact I knew I didn’t need to. As it happened I had no choice, the park was closed throughout my stay due to bad weather and the risk of falling trees, a precaution in place following a tragic fatality involving a child in 2018.

The weather had been much kinder in March 2022. I had been able to spend the week in a pair of hot-pants and flip flops and even develop a tan back then. I was quite poorly at the time and the vitamin D had been the perfect medicine. This time round, despite only being a few calendar weeks earlier in the year, I’d spend the duration looking like a giant sausage roll about to hit the slopes.

Turns out the rain in Spain doesn’t just stay mainly in the plain. Liars.

In a perverse way though, the poor weather actually added to the experience, as did spending it with a ‘local’. They both made for a very different kind of adventure than the one usually dictated by guidebooks or the perfected sunny curations on social media.

I was smitten with Casa de Campo, once a 16th century royal hunting estate and – for the past hundred years – a public park outside the city centre which is about 5 times the size of New York’s Central Park. A large man-made lake forms one of the focal points, surrounded by numerous eateries. H and I chose one and spent a nice couple of hours sat on a table by the window that the slightly abrupt waitress had seemed reluctant to let us have, and after warming ourselves up on coffees decided to see if we could hire out one of the rowing boats we saw parked up on the water. The advantage of it being wet and windy meant that there was nobody else using them. This not only meant that we had the entire lake to ourselves, giving us the freedom to roam wherever we wanted, but more importantly, it limited the opportunities for us to crash.

The cold, choppy waters and my inability to operate a boat took me back to my sailing days at Seasalter. Eventually, H hinted at her frustration with my rowing skills by stating that it “might be nice to see a different part of the lake”. I’m not sure what her problem was. We’d only been spinning around by the boundary buoys for about 15 minutes, but if we were to have any chance of returning the boat within the allotted time then we would need to rely on what H could remember from her rowing classes. In the end we were about 20 minutes late returning the boat, but nobody cared. Do the same thing in Hyde Park and you’ll probably be charged for an additional session or sent an intimidating letter in the post, complete with grainy time-stamped CCTV image of you haplessly buggering about with an oar.

“They don’t really care about time here”, H advised me, and she was right. My watch was a bit redundant for those few days in Madrid, and that felt nice.

The “mercados” – indoor markets – were another highlight. H‘s local in La Latina was Mercado de la Cebada. I had browsed some of the more touristy ones in the city centre during my last visit, but ones like this felt that little bit more real. There was – of course – the encapsulating smell of fish upon entry, but it was overcome by the sense of sight: the rainbow of fruit and vegetables on display, including the biggest tomatoes I’ve ever seen. Can’t get those at Tesco in Faversham.

A man whose stall consisted of piles of chocolate-coated nuts and dried fruits called us over and offered us some free samples. He spoke a bit of English, and seemed to be proud (as he should be) of being able to name the items he was selling:

“This one chocolate covered sunflower seed. This one: coconut. This one: strawberry. And here: papaya”

Papaya.

He’d said it.

For some reason, I only mentally tap in to my fondness of papaya when I’m in Spain. I hadn’t really thought about papaya for four years, when the same excitement – again in a Madrid mercado – had prompted me to pay way over the odds for a giant papaya that I didn’t even manage to eat most of (sore topic. I’ll leave it there). But here I was again, the terrific tropical goodness being flaunted in front of me. I immediately advised the seller that I would like to purchase a selection of his goods. At 12 Euros a bag, I felt the price pretty steep for some fruit and nuts but – papaya.

“I’ll take a bit of everything, but I especially like papaya please.”

He speedily bagged up a range of items and priced it all up. It was a little over the set weight, but never mind, because papaya.

Except he hadn’t included any.

“What about the papaya?”, I asked sadly after looking in the bag, like a scene from a modern-day Oliver Twist.

“No papaya. You want papaya? I charge more.”

Sometimes you just have to accept defeat and move on.

But I have to say, the rest of it was completely delicious, and I was still pleased to have made the purchase overall. Lasted me until my journey home and beyond.

The wonderful thing about the rest of the time in Madrid was that were no set plans. Pretty convenient, in a place where time doesn’t seem to be a thing. I adored being able to take my time breathing in the back streets: the cute cafes, the crafts and the inviting tapas bars that are ready to welcome you with a plate of local, mouth-watering jamón.

A place that made me realise, I actually do quite like shakshuka (although a home-cooked attempt a week later was nowhere near as nice). The video game bar where just the addition of cigarette smoke could have made one feel like they’d travelled back to the halcyon days of the 1990’s. The juicy green olives and peanut mix served with drinks. The world’s biggest Zara, where I bought some lovely beige trousers because – you know, I’m forty now. Even the Venezualan restaurant which H – bless her – had been incredibly excited to show me but at which I experienced an unfortunate case of food poisoning (the tequeños were still worth it).

I don’t always believe in visiting a place twice when there is so much of the world to see and – were it not for H – I’m not sure I’d have gone back to Madrid. But once you take the time to go beyond the crowds and tourist hotspots, and really get into the veins of a place, it takes a hold of you a little bit. Some places just know how to clutch at your heart and awaken your senses, even if all you’re doing is exploring their hidden sides. The bits that don’t make the guidebooks or TikTok.

I’ll definitely return.

But I’m not going to try and buy papaya again.