I am not a good tourist. I went to Madrid for about week, and snapped a few photos. Here is a telling of my visit. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon. The flight is about 11 hours total, so I was a bit jet lagged with the 6 hour time change. We checked into our hotel. And did some local exploring around the nieghborhood. One thing i noticed, the bars are very brightly lit. I wasn't feeling this, also, the severe lack of tequila. Our first full day, we hopped on the Metro system and began exploring the area around the Prado. First thing we saw was this huge post office, Palacio de Comunicaciones. Wow, some architecture for a post office.
Directly across the street is this beautiful fountain, Plaza de Cibeles. Unfortunately most of the fountains were shut off because of a horrible draught that was happening. None the less i thought this was a pretty cool looking fountain. I guess I'm kind of a dork that i get excited about statues.
This is the archway at the Plaza de Colon. Which is basically, Christopher Columbus' Arch. I have no idea how we ended up here, we just sort of kept walking. We decided to have lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe since it was here.

The city of Madrid, and Spain's flags.

Again just wandering about the city looking at sites and ducking in and out of shoppes. The corners are filled with street performers, mostly accordion players. We did see a pan flute player playing "Hotel California," and manage to see a mime who had, no joke, a miming dog. The dog didn't bark and it chased things that weren't there.

One of the best parts of the entire trip was wandering around the city. We kept finding ourselves in different neighbors. Sol was the shopping district, Cheuca was the "gay" district. Each one was filled with great shoppes on twisting pathways.

Public water is not drinkable in the city. The fountains sher are purdy though.

There are no lack of park areas in the city. This one is across the street from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and near the Prado. We seemed to have misplaced the museums because we walked and walked up and down the street before we found the actual museums.

We went to the Zoo Aquarium and took pictures of cute animals. The Metro left us near a sign that pointed to the zoo, after walking through a wooded pathway and running into a man urinting in the street, we finally found the zoo. It was rather large and they had peafowl running along the paths. You could also get very close to the animals, closer than usual.

Why take a picture of a racoon? The girl in me thinks "oh how cute..."

The zoo also had an aquaruim, but those photos didn't turn out too well. We ran into a school group of children torturing the poor rhino with trash. Lots of the large animals were rescued from poachers and missing tusk or horns.

The is Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida. Inside the ceilings are adorned with frescos by Goya.
The city is known for it's nightlife which doesn't really kick of til one in the morning. Okay we were a bit tired after walking all day to stay out that late and enjoy the scene, but we did take a break at a chocolateria and had some churros with chocolate.  

We stayed with a Belgian family who lent us their bikes to take a tour of the city.

Belgians eat chocolate all the time. Breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. It was great, i never get tired of chocolate. And its not so sweet like Hershey's, its more semi sweet or dark. Mmmm, maybe next time we'll go to Belguim.

Cervantes is Spain's most celebrated author. Most people are familar with the story of Don Quixote. This is a statue of the main characters, Don Quixote and his faithful sidekick Sancho Panza off to fight windmills...

The city had a month long celebration to honor Cervantes called, Cervantisimo! We walked by the National Library but the exhibit was closed.

Outside the Palacio Real is a series of statues of former kings and even a "maze" garden.

The Royal Palace. Does anyone live here? Not sure. But it's cool to think that someone does. I could live in a palace...
Amy and I pose for a photo overlooking the city. We decided we are old and out of shape. Walking so much made us more tired than we imagined.

Another shot of the city overlooking the palace.

We were told that spain was built on a hill to keep attackers away. The Plaza Mayor is were the main city events, like court rulings, executions, and bull fights would happen. The farther you walk from the plaza the farther down hill you get. I knew i felt like i was walking up hills all day.

This is the Temple de Debod. I've always been fascinated by Egyptian culture. When a river flooded and area of the country, a series of temple were going to be destroyed. A bunch of countries donated money and helped rescue them. Egypt gave each country a temple as a gift.
I'm all about churches and the city is filled with cathedrals. Outside the church is site honoring the Virgen Mary. According to legend, she appeared here and later this cathedral was built to honor the siting.