The last culture we're going to encounter on this trip is the film script on the back seat of our friend's car. He has driven us to Kikuyu (Calle Barbara de Braganza 4), a suavely minimalist eating haunt serving Catalan specialities a stone's throw from Madrid's fashion houses. By 10.30 p.m., when Madrilenos start to think seriously about dinner, it is filling up with designers and models.
Our friend has just come back from the Cannes Film Festival. It is as good a way as any to start a determinedly superficial couple of days in this most hedonistic of capital cities.
I'd been challenged to spend 48 hours in Madrid without going to bed. I couldn't. Or rather, I might have been able to, but given the omnipresence of alcohol (it is the only place I have seen executives downing beers with breakfast), I would have needed to be stretchered back at the end by Europ Assistance. What is entirely possible, however, is to spend 48 hours in Madrid without going to bed at night. Here's how.
Start cautiously, at a cockteleria. Madrid's most venerable is Museo Chicote on the Gran Via at number 12 - a shrine to serious, stylish drinking which counts Bunuel among its former patrons. It is also a wondrously preserved example of 1930s interior decor, even though the firm that took it over a couple of years back has installed a television and a modern cigarette machine - sins of which I trust it will soon repent.
Braced by a Chicote special, based on gin and red vermouth, it is time to take the first of the decisions that constantly hover in the background on a night out in Madrid. You can go to a restaurant for dinner, or tapear (eat tapas), or both: Madrilenos themselves will often have some tapas, then skip the first course in a restaurant.
Like a lot of other things in this eccentric city, some of the more fashionable restaurants are completely over the top. Diners at Bomarzo (C/Jorge Juan 16) walk into a lobby lit by a towering pyramid of votive candles. Chill-out music plays in the background. The restaurant's lush blue walls are decorated with framed leopard and zebra skins. Here and there, there are miniature, denuded bushes.
Those who intend to concentrate on the food should try out a new generation of tapas establishments. Until a few years ago, you could either go to the corner bar with its indifferent tit-bits and barely drinkable vino de la casa, or seek out one of a handful of first-rate spots, mostly Andalusian, where the bill could mount giddyingly.
The Desahogo (Plaza de San Miguel) is typical of a range of new bars that provide good wine by the glass to drink with tapas based on fine, often traditional, ingredients - including 12 types of Asturian cheese.
With a full stomach, you are ready for the next choice. You can go dancing or drinking at any number of discos and cafes, or you can "ir de copas", as the Spanish say, combining music and booze at a string of bars that stay open into the early hours, each purveying a particular sound.
The liveliest area for copas bars is still in and around the Plaza Santa Ana. Our own, increasingly random, selection had us listening to ethnic-eclectic at La Boca del Lobo (C/Echegaray 11), jazz at the Cafe Populart (C/Huertas 24), and torture-techno at Kasbah (C/Santa Maria 17) which boasts eight DJs. The biggest thing in Madrid right now, though, is Nuevo Flamenco - flamenco fused with pop or jazz or, very attractively, as at Cardamomo (Echegaray 15), with Latin rhythms.
For the past few years, the conservatives have had the upper hand in both national and local government, and I had heard distressing tales of copas bars forced to close as early as 2 a.m.. But Madrid at 4 a.m. still has more people, and cars, on the streets than most cities at 4 p.m.. Some are calling it a day, or rather a night. Others are on their way to after hours clubs like Heat. . .But (C/Barcelo 11), which does not even open until 5 a.m..
Yet others are heading for a chocolateria. These are for those who are winding down but still don't quite feel ready for anything as defeatist as sheets and a pillow. The Chocolateria San Gines, with its stately green-and-cream interior and its defy-the-night lighting supplies the benchmark by which others are measured.
Part of the reason for going to a chocolateria is hangover-damage limitation. As the name suggests, the staple offering is thick, gooey Spanish drinking chocolate, best accompanied by a portion of either churros or porras, two equally delicious sorts of oilfried batter strips.
Or you could have another drink. My brandy at the Chocolateria San Gines was a measure more appropriate for beer. It was approaching dawn as we left. A typical, in no way riotous, Sunday morning in Madrid.
There was a little girl who couldn't have been more than six years old in the group at the table next to ours in the chocolateria and, as we made our way past the Joy Eslava disco next door, we bumped into a bride coming out in full wedding gown and train.