MADRID razed us ever so quixotically with consistently warm and kind people, the hyper-chic and comfort factor of our hotel in an old renovated textile warehouse in the garment district, the Plaça Major almost to ourselves but for some policia on horseback letting their horses scratch their hind quarters on the base of a statue, the addictive tapas from the renewed, glassed-in and upscale Mercado San Miguel, the magnificent Goyas at the Prado [the "elephants" in Espana for me!], the one euro ham bocadillo from the Museo de Jamon [not a real museum but the ham "hang-out", or rather "hanging-down", spot!], the levitating view from the top of Jean Nouvel's extension at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia, Picasso's massively devouring "Guernica", a consecrated REAL MADRID game in HD, the antiquated patisseria with barely moving nonagenarian owner in the workaday Chueca district, reviving in the winter sunshine at the tranquil Parque de el Retiro, the maddeningly expansive junk web that is the El Rastro flea market on a Sunday morning, and always, the ripe Spanish moon above a dark narrow street where Cervantes had lived, written and died...
