Upon leaving the Madrid airport, we checked into 2 rooms in the Palace Hotel (Westin) on the Gran Via. The Gran Via is a grand boulevard with trees and grass. The Palace Hotel is a 5 star hotel 2 blocks from the world famous Prado Museum. The Prado features an enormous collection of Goya and Velasquez paintings. We had no car, which is wise in this city without traffic laws, so we jumped on a tour bus once a day. First we stopped at El Escorrial, then the Santa Cruz de la Caidos, and finally the Prado.
Madrid is more hilly than I expected, tho its no San Francisco. Madrid has very large park areas, but many of them on the outskirts appear closed to the public. The public buildings are incredibly ornate and worth every tax dollar they cost the Spaniards, but I wouldn't volunteer my own money for these. Like most of Europe, the Spanish live in small apartments altho there is no shortage of open land.
The monument at Santa Cruz was unexpected. On the one hand, Franco appears to have no friends here, yet the monument is perfectly maintained and unmarked by the graffitti you see dominating the landscape of Spain. Franco had the monument built by prisoners he caught during the 1936 Spanish Civil War and plenty of them died while coring out the center of a granite mountain.
Took in some flamenco dancing one night. The men sing in a mode similar to what you hear in Arabic prayer calls, which is not particularly pleasing, while the women, who sing much less, sing pleasantly at best. The dancing is frenzied and medium sexy. Its something you must do once in your life, and repeat when in Spain, but is no match for Madonna. Upon leaving very late at night, I flagged down a cab. One of the previous cab riders volunteered some thoughts on Bush, so I volunteered some ideas on the lack of any guts in the fighting department at locations near Spain, say, near the time of World War II. Could have been a more exciting night from all that...