touristic plug for madrid....

(Click on title to read full story- this is NOT mine, but from an article entitled, "Open All Hours")

'I do not believe anyone likes [Madrid] much when he first goes there. It has none of the look that you expect of Spain...Yet when you get to know it, it is the most Spanish of all cities, the best to live in, the finest people, the finest climate.' - Ernest Hemingway

ALL Europe's capital cities, Madrid is the one that most resembles a lover scorned. It is the only significant European city never to have hosted the Olympic Games; its most recent bid was rebuffed in July last year. Madrid also has no great monuments, no Eiffel Tower, no Colosseum, no internationally recognised landmark that resonates with those dreaming of the places that we must see before we die.

To add insult to obscurity, if the world knows any Spanish city, it is Barcelona, Madrid's eternal rival in everything from politics to football. Add in a climate that is one of Europe's most extreme - Madrid is Europe's highest capital city, which ensures harsh, biting winters and fiercely hot summers - and Madrid's resume begins to look a little thin.

But to paraphrase US president John F. Kennedy's famous comment about New York, most cities may be nouns but Madrid is definitely the most active of verbs.

What Madrid possesses is an energy that no city, not even Barcelona, can muster. It is a city where traffic jams at 3am are not unusual. Madrid also has more bars than any other city in the world - seven for every 100 inhabitants - and most of them are full most nights of the week.

Madrid is still a city that sleeps late, gets about its business in daylight hours, takes a long lunch, has a siesta and then gears up for the night ahead. But lest you think that nighttime activities are only for the hedonistic young, ponder this: Madrid's bars at 1am are as filled with octogenarians and young children as with the city's young and energetic. To emerge on to the streets of central Madrid around midnight and be enveloped by the buzz of happy crowds of people may not be the Eiffel Tower, but it may be something even better - an opportunity for the traveller to become an instant local, a madrileno, at once surrounded by and an integral part of something special.

Art.....

In true Madrid fashion, there is even a story that somehow manages to combine Madrid's reputation for raucous energy with the sophistication of high art. A few years ago, the Museo del Prado organised a special exhibition of Velazquez. It lasted for months, but madrilenos, being madrilenos, tended to leave their visit to the last moment. Not just the last day, but the last evening of the last day.

The doors shut, as scheduled, at 9pm, only for those inside to be assailed by an angry mob pounding on the doors, chanting "we want to come in". The museum's authorities bowed to the pressure - perhaps being locals themselves, they understood the need for flexibility - and reopened the doors, not closing them again until after midnight.

Only in Madrid could an exhibition of 17th-century paintings cause a near riot.
Only in Madrid would people see viewing great works of art at midnight as an entirely normal requirement. But therein lies the essence of Madrid - its marriage between irresistible clamour and accessible sophistication.

(Click on title to read full story)