Love-Spanish.com: Is The Restaurant Far Away?

Monday, 2 September 2013

Is The Restaurant Far Away?

Introduction

This post deals with indicating how near/ far the restaurant is in Spanish, and the distance from where you are to the restaurant.

SCENARIO

Imagine you are with a relative, a friend, a work colleague or even a complete stranger who is looking for a restaurant and asks you: "is the restaurant far away?"

In Spanish, the other person could choose to say:

¿Queda lejos el restaurante?

OUR TIP

The question is an invitation for you to say how far away the restaurant is. A yes/no answer may be strictly sufficient. However, with little effort, your answer could be a lot more informative.

Here are some examples of how you could reply:

El restaurante queda lejos (the restaurant is far away)
El restaurante queda bastante lejos (the restaurant is quite far away)
El restaurante queda muy lejos (the restaurant is very far away)
El restaurante queda cerca (the restaurant is near)
El restaurante queda bastante cerca (the restaurant is quite near)
El restaurante queda muy cerca (the restaurant is very near)
El restaurante queda a la vuelta de la esquina (the restaurant is around the corner)
El restaurante queda al final de la calle a la izquierda (the restaurant is at the end of the street/ road on the left)
El restaurante queda a dos manzanas (the restaurant is two blocks away)
El restaurante queda a dos cuadras (the restaurant is two blocks away)
El restaurante queda a cinco minutos a pie (the restaurant is five minutes away on foot)
El restaurante queda en el centro (the restaurant is in the town centre/ downtown)
El restaurante no queda lejos (the restaurant is not far away)
El restaurante queda a doscientos metros^* (the restaurant is 200 meters away)
El restaurante queda a trescientos metros^* (the restaurant is 300 meters away)

Now you should practise answering the question:

¿Queda lejos el restaurante?

*See some commonly used length in Spanish below

*Spanish Lengths

Some expressions of length/ distance commonly used in Spanish are shown below:

	Metros	Kilómetros
cien metros	100m
doscientos metros	200m
trescientos metros	300m
cuatrocientos metros	400m
quinientos metros	500m	1/2km
seiscientos metros	600m
setecientos metros	700m
ochocientos metros	800m
novecientos metros	900m
mil metros/ un kilómetro	1000m	1km