I can attest to the obvious: A day and a half in Madrid is not nearly enough to get any nuanced sense of Spain’s capital city.

We could have done better. I never have arrived at one of the world’s great cities having done so little preparation. Not much studying of maps or prominent sights, despite none of the three of us having been here before.

Not proud of it. Just worked out that way due to some tight scheduling.

Primarily because Madrid in this case is a stopover, not a destination.

The destination, tomorrow, will be about 300 miles north and west of where we are now, as we plan to walk the final stages of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage.

Meantime, what we have seen of Madrid has impressed. A clean, well-appointed city, edging toward urban sprawl but quite livable in the areas we have passed through.

We arrived in mid-afternoon on a train from Beziers, France. After 5.5 hours it rolled into the Atocha train station on the southeast edge of town.

By the time we got to an apartment in La Latina, one of the oldest parts of the city, it was getting late, though “late” is a relative term in Madrid.

The city has rhythms we were not prepared to absorb on this brief visit, including odd and narrow times for eating, including a post-9 p.m. meal that tourists often turn into a large, too-late dinner — one that locals (sensibly) treat as a sort of glorified snack, preferring to make lunch (2-3 p.m.) the main meal of the day.

Madrilenos also stay up quite late, often past midnight, and begin the day later than do the citizens of most other western societies.

The streets in this part of the city are narrow and winding, reflecting no doubt its age. It is difficult to keep a sense of direction when walking them.

We set off to walk to the Reina Sofia Museum of art which seemed not all that far away. But we got turned around in the narrow streets and needed an hour to get there.

It was worth the effort because the Reina Sofia, which is dedicated to modern art, is hosting an enormous exhibit of Pablo Picasso’s works, including the enormous and seminal Guernica, which already calls the museum home and has an entire wall to itself.

Two of the three of us are big fans of modern art, which is why we made a beeline for the Reina Sofia rather than the better-known Prado.

We had a late dinner near our apartment, and the meal included many of Spain’s most famous dishes, including grilled octopus and garlic shrimp with a pitcher of sangria and peach-flavored grappa at the end of the meal.

We also have taken lunch while sitting in the sun at a taverna up the street, sharing patatas bravas, calamari and huevos rotos — a delectable combination of fried eggs, chorizo and potatoes. (Seen in the photo above.)

So, yes, Madrid … lots to offer and the mass of it unseen and unknown to us.

We will try to make it back some day.