Sandeman’s NEW Europe

I heard about this company’s city tour through my hostel in Madrid. Our tour guide, Sebastian, was phenomenal.
The way this particular tour works is that there is no up front cost, you just tip at the end. This allows you to see how you like it and gives the flexibility to the attendee.
Their tour took us around the city starting from the Plaza Mayor. We traversed back alleys, saw some amazing sights but most of all heard some really interesting history and stories. What the tour lacked in distance it more than made up in entertainment value. Though it’s three hours in length they do stop for a quick drink at a café and take the opportunity to give you more information about their paid tours. I was interested in a few of these including a daytrip tour of Toledo and a Tapas tour.
Sebastian was the best guide I’ve ever had. He was able to relate Spain’s history to every single country of the attendees on my day. Quick on his feet, he responded to any question with enthusiasm and wit. His routes through the city were impeccable and he clearly knew his stuff. His stories were interactive — he’d often grab a few of us to represent kings and queens as he told the stories.
Highly recommended. I will certainly be checking out their other city tours.

J’ai découvert ces visites grâces à une petit recherché sur Unilocal et c’est vraiment top comme concept, dès que j’irai à la découverte d’une nouvelle ville, je rechercherai si Sandeman’s existe!
Le principe: une visite que l’on peut réserver sur internet, «gratuite» de la ville.
Les guides né sont pas payés par l’organisme mais par les pourboires qu’on leur donne à la fin (d’où les guillemets du gratuite). J’espère simplement pour eux qu’ils s’y retrouvent mais je pense.
Le seul bémol est le nombre de personnes par visite (une trentaine pour la notre je pense, mais ça aide probablement les guides à gagner leur vie).
Les visites sont disponibles au moins en anglais et dans la langue locale, pour le français, c’est pas impossible que ça existe mais ça doit être plus rare.
La visite en elle-​même était passionnante, elle a quand même duré environ 3h donc ça donne un super premier aperçu de la ville et de son histoire.
Notre guide, Enrique, avait plein d’anecdotes sur sa ville, était super sympa et drôle.
Bref, un super plan pour découvrir Madrid et l’Espagne en quelques heures avant de partir explorer par vous même un peu plus loin.

Bea es divertida y directa. Nos gustó. Hasta ahí. Nada obnubilante. Fuerte impronta musulmana en su discurso, que no me molesta, pero puede irritar a algún católico conservador. Revisen dónde es el break. Es un sitio grande, cómodo pero sin veredas. Si uno quiere esperar afuera no hay sitio y la zona no es turística, no se puede aprovechar para hacer fotos. Nos dio buenos tips para aprovechar las atracciones en los momentos que son gratis.

Excellent. Just do it.

I had a great time today on the free tour of Madrid offered by Sandemans. it covered the west side of central Madrid and we got to discover so many interesting places. Fabrizio was our tour guide and did a fantastic job. He was extremely informative, gave a great history of Madrid and Spain as a whole, and was also very fun! Highly recommended.

Sandeman’s New Europe tours are well worthwhile whatever city you are in. We were lucky to have Celia as our tour guide in Madrid. The tour was about 2.5 hours long, but you go along at a very comfortable pace. Celia was very enthusiastic, had many interesting stories and extremely helpful. She had lots of great recommendations for places to eat and things to see while on our trip, several of which we tried and we were not disappointed! The tour costs nothing, but you do tip your guide at the end. Celia is definitely a tour guide I would recommend to ask for.

This tour came highly recommended by a friend of mine. Since this tour is free, I thought «why not?» You can give the tour guide a tip, but that isn’t mandatory.
Our tour guide, Gráinne, was amazing and so informative. I loved that she was from Ireland, but studied in Spain for a while and decided to stay and live there.
It started raining during our tour, and Gráinne tried to get us to different places of shelter while keeping her composure and telling us all about the city of Madrid. She even used interactive demonstrations to get us involved, which were very entertaining.
I really enjoyed her descriptions and explanations of everything we were seeing. I didn’t even feel like we walked that much around the town, but we totally did! I loved that there was no obligation to pay, but since Gráinne was so great, I obviously gave her a tip.
I wish I had done this tour on my first day in the city because I would have been able to know which hot spots to hit up and learn more about. We ended up doing this on our last day in town, and it was helpful to bringing a complete picture to my trip from what we had seen while visiting Madrid.
This tour comes highly recommended by me as well! Do it, I promise you won’t be disappointed!

I have being all over Europe, and if there is a Sandeman New Europe walking tour, I m taking it because the quality is heads above all others. They get it kicked off in Plaza Mayor for all of their tours here in Madrid, and you can tell that they are more popular than the other «Free Tours.»
The walking tours for all New Europe Tours are «FREE», tips only. To cut to the chase the: tour guides for the «free tour» operate as independent contractors, they pay the company for the amount of people that are in the group that they are leading and the tips cover their payment and it is what they operate on.
Back to the tour, they are all basically college age/​post college folks that have a passion for the city that they are in. Since they are young, they can take a joke or two or in our case nothing but wise cracks by me and my buddy for almost the entire trip. There is a mid-​point break, and usually it is at someplace where it rather inexpensive so even you can get something to eat on a backpackers budget and there is a restroom for you to use. Just overall the guides are awesome, they even sell tickets to the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium self-​guided tour at their HQs.
If you are a Euro-​Novice, take the free-​walking tour: to get orientated to the city because they take you to almost of the places in the city center worth seeing, to get the low-​down of the locals deals and steals (since the guides are all young people, they know where the deals are at) than decide how to send the rest of your time.
Be warn, if you go during the «low season» they might not operate certain paid tours if there is not enough people that show up.

Sandeman’s New Europe walking tours are FREE. Yes free! However, your tour guide does ask for tips. That’s how they get paid. So if you think your guide deserves a small or large tip at the end of a 3 hour tour, feel free to give them some money. Otherwise they might starve. No, really.
Our tour guide was Mark and he was passionate about his newly adopted home. Mark is actually from Ireland and now lives in Madrid. He took us around the city giving us tidbits of history, fun facts, and juicy gossip. We started at Plaza Mayor and walked to Sobrino de Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world where Hemingway ate at and where Goya once worked. We took a rest stop near the Chocolateria San Gines and had sandwiches at Cerveceria 100 Montaditos. We walked to the house of Miguel Cervantes. We checked out the Opera house built by Queen Isabella II. We made our way back to Puerta del Sol and took pictures by the bear and madroño statue. The tour was informative and educational. It made me like Madrid a little better. Thanks to Mark and Sandeman’s for providing such a great tour. They also provide paid tours like the Tapas Tour and Bar Crawl which includes the cost of drinks and food. Worth the money since my cousin and I also went on the Tapas tour.