We found a pretty affordable hotel downtown, which was in a busy neighbourhood. Walking out the front door, however, put us right in the thick of things.
There are newstands every 10m in this city with press in just about any language you can imagine.
Walking down the street a bit more, we ended up in in the Puerta del Sol, which is pretty hopping.
It's also totally under construction right now, so it's not terribly exciting...
Walking down the streets, we were struck by how clean and pleasant the buildings were.
This is no gritty Mediterranean city.
The tree-lined avenues make for great walking.
Next stop, the Plaza Mayor. Every city in this country has a Plaza Mayor and a Plaza España. It's just the way it is.
Madrid's can honestly claim to be the nicest one of all the ones we saw.
And, being mid-March, the number of tourists was pretty small, limited mostly to Japanese groups and the occasional German.
You can sit out in the sun and enjoy some overpriced coffee if you're so inclined.
Our steps would next take us out near the Royal Palace and the cathedral in front of it.
We were hoping that, even thought it was Monday, at least the Palace would be open. It took us a good 5 minutes to cross this intersection in front of all the stuff though. Busy!
Inside is pretty cool, like most of the churches around here.
This photo of a nun-painting is pretty freaky. I don't know why.
Here's the palace. It turns out that it WAS open today. But they closed it for some official royal function. So we'll have to wait until tomorrow.
View of the cathedral
Hordes of tourists wondeirng if they're gettin' in the palace or not.
The royal guards were just finishing up their work from the ceremonies.
Oh well, more walking for us today. w000t!
Just a tonne of gorgeous stuff to see, even if the trees haven't yet bloomed.
The big building in the upper left is the opera house, which spent most of the 20th century in state of disrepair.
They finally renovated it in the 90s. Looks good.
And they put a big statue in front of it.
Even the side entrances are pretty swanky.
I call this -- statue city, not to be confused to Spatula City!
Guards getting ready to head home after a hard 2 hours' work!
Everything looks so nice when it's sunny and clear out.
No idea what this building is, but we like it.
The old style buildings repair are awesome.
Our next stop was the Temple of Debod (dedicated to Amón), a temple brought to Madrid in 1970 in exchange for help with a dam/artifact rescue project in Egypt.
This is Ra popping in for some coffee.
You almost forget that you're completely surrounded by a huge city here.
This appeared to be the place to walk your dog and otherwise enjoy a lovely Monday morning.
We didn't realise it, but we were on a big hill, overlooking quite a drop and a valley below.
We continued on, at this point just kinda getting lost as we could, and otherwise enjoying the views of the city.
There are a remarkable number of colours in this city and we truly enjoyed ourselves.
This is one of the more swanky neighbourhoods, making it slightly more expensive.
They were filming some weird old-school movie/soap/show here or something. Cool.
Man, I love this wide angle lens. Pimpin'.
Huge roundabouts and parks are everywhere here. Excellent use of space and surprisingly good urban planning.
Uuuh, we stumbled across this cool little plaza somewhere downtown. I think it's Salseas, but I don't have a map handy, so I'm kinda guessing.
Either way, cool place to hang out.
This is a cool bank, designed by some funky and famous architect whose name escapes me right now. We had a full 3-course lunch (they eat dinner at lunchtime here) for like 9€ each. With wine. Awesome.
These are the local courts. I forget if they're local or national.
Eeek! Girl!
We kept running into French buildings here. This is some academy or friendship society or something.
Why is this woman so full of despair?
(a) She can't find her top. (b) The amount of gardening that needs done is freakin' her out.
(a) She can't find her top. (b) The amount of gardening that needs done is freakin' her out.
Daffodil season is here !!
This is offically called the Palacio de Communicaciones. It's really just the Post Office head office.
Everybody agrees it's ludicrous that the Post Office has such a fantastic building, so they gave it a more important sounding name.
This is the Palacio de Linares. Whatever that is.
This is one of the largest and craziest roundabouts in the city. Traffic is actually still pretty manageable here though.
We decided to out for a walk at night and catch some photos. This is one of the other buildings near our hotel.
Looking down towards the Plaza de la Independencia.
This is the Metropolis Building. (That's cuz it says "Metropolis", y'see).
This is the Rolex Building.
This is the famous arch at the Plaza de Independencia. The moon over it is just awesome.
Love the moving cars.
We walked back into the city to check stuff out at night.
The Plaza Mayor was still pretty hopping.
There were a couple of Japanese chicks sitting around having a blast with their tripod and night-exposures.
Love the moon over everything. Sweeet.