Mis-Mastering the Madrid Metro (#782)

3 April 2026

While the swim/workout and the pool itself are the primary goals behind all of my pool tourism, a very close third place is the journey to and from the pool. Particularly when I'm in a new city, I view the travel as part of the challenge ... and the delight.

It can also be humbling ... but in a growth-oriented way.

We arrived into Madrid on Thursday late afternoon and I was smugly confident in my ability to navigate the Metro from the airport to our hotel. Madrid still doesn't have a "tap & pay" credit/debit card system like exists in London (and like we found last year in both Amsterdam and Copenhagen). What it does have is a very large "central zone" inside which you can by la tarjeta multi, load it with ten tickets to start and then share that singular card across multiple travelers in your group for buses and the metro. This becomes a very economical, comfortable way to get around this metropolis of about seven million people.

Unlike London's Oyster card, which can be tapped across buses, the Underground, the Overground and trains (up to a certain distance), la tarjeta multi does not, crucially, work on the Renfe Cercanías commuter train lines, which include their C1 as a main line from the airport. I must have missed that important footnote in my pre-travel research, which resulted in us burning a couple of metro tickets, turning around, purchasing C1 tickets on a different machine, taking the C1 to the Charmartin train station and then finally connecting to the Metro 10 Line to get to our hotel in the Cuzco area of town.

That "metro mis-mastering" behind me, I set off confidently on Friday morning to head south to the Aluche area, walking out of my hotel at 7:45am ... believing myself to have plenty of time to arrive well ahead of the 9am pool opening of the Centro Deportivo Municipale Aluche. The journey should have only taken at most 50 minutes, so I envisioned myself strolling the grounds with a pre-swim espresso and churro in hand, snapping photos at my leisure.

What I didn't count on was stupidity, construction, failing to understand how train carriage signage sometimes works in Madrid, and failing to remember the lesson learned from the night before!

Stupidity first: I knew I was going south. But, I made the elementary transit error of getting on the 10 line heading north. Fortunately, I realized that as soon as the train pulled into its first stop at Plaza de Castilla, so I got off and turned around and started heading back south.

Construction next: I had seen the signs on the 10 line the evening before noting that there was construction on the line between Cuzco and Nuevos Ministerios. But, I didn't register that in my mind because our hotel was at the Cuzco stop ... and hence it didn't effect us on Thursday. What this meant for Friday morning is that, as soon as my southbound train came back to Cuzco, it reversed direction and started heading north again, because the track was completely closed between Cuzco & Nuevos Ministerios ... so I was heading back to Plaza de Castilla ... again! More time lost.

About the only fortunate thing for me on this trip was that there were plenty of helpful staff roaming the halls of Madrid's massive, immaculate and cavernous metro stops. A very kind staff member guided me to take the 9 line to Colombia, switch to the 8 line to Nuevos Ministerios and then to pickup the 10 line south (after the construction).

Which brings us to the third source of delay: me not understanding how signage and carriage usage happens on the Madrid metro. On the London Underground, each line has distinct colouring and carriages: a Northern Line train looks different from a Piccadilly Line which looks different from the Elizabeth Line, and so on and so on. Though I saw some slight differences between the 1 line and the 10 line in Madrid, these were not dramatic. Moreover, what I discovered, after standing on what I thought was the right platform for the 9 line train and then not getting on that train because I saw 7 and 10 line signage inside the train, is that some train wagons are used on multiple different lines and contain signage inside for all of those lines. So, the platform matters ... not the design of the train or the signs inside (e.g., both pictures below taken from when I was finally riding on the correct 10 line south!):

After that additional source of delay, when I was finally on the correct 10 metro line south, I realized that I would be delayed even further as I had forgotten to internalize the lesson from the night before. The quickest journey to the pool was to take the 10 mentro line to Cuatros Vientos and then to change to the C5 Renfe train! I didn't have a ticket for the C5 and didn't want to deal with the pfaff or cost of getting one, so I got off at Aviación Española and walked the rest of the way, which meant another ~15 minute delay.

Thus, my plan to arrive ~20 minutes early had me arriving ~20 minutes late ... but my efforts were rewarded with a beautiful, sunlit, five-lane, 50-meter pool, constant 1.7 meter depth pool, with no more than 3 people in any lane, for the low-low entry fee of €2.50:

But there was so much more on the grounds of this impressive community sports facility, including another indoor pool (25 meters) and a massive outdoor pool (which appeared to be two almost 50-meter long pools off-filter connected side-by-side (but were still closed for the season):

I only managed to squeeze in 2,600 meters before I needed to jump back on the metro** to meet my wife for lunch, but they were good ones. And, the one benefit of all the mis-direction coming to the pool meant that I found this great little pastelria for a post-swim espresso and chocolate-drenched pastry.

** I am happy to report that I got home without incident and was a Maestro de Metro for the rest of the fin de semana.