SAMARKANDA

If you harbor highfaluting dreams of trips on the Orient Express, lush tropical environs, and a Louis Vuitton case packed with tissue paper but you’ve woken up in Madrid, then fear not. This stunning little restaurant sits in the Atocha Station (trains, check), and has a terrace café which looks over the station’s botanical garden – we kid you not, it’s for real – with lots of foliage, a babbling brook and even a family of turtles (tropical environs, check). Serving up light lunches including tapas, sandwiches, cocktails and crêpes, you even get to sit on bamboo chairs and feel a little like an old world colonialist for the day. As for the Vuitton luggage; we’d definitely consider murder a viable option.