Madrid, Madly, Deeply

You'd be mad to miss Madrid. It's not just a Spanish city. It's the Spanish city. It's also the city I was most terrified to enter. The city from which I had to fly home. I still loved the city. The art galleries were great. The wine was great. People were great. Trying to talk Spanish was great. Flying home was probably the worst mistake of my life. But back to Madrid.

Madrid is a city of things, and here are six random things I loved about Madrid:

1. Sunsets!

(Sunsets are a little known phenomenon in which the sky changes color when the sun goes down. If you look at the right time of day, you might see one too!) 

There is something majestic sunsets, and a Spanish sunset is quite a thing. Colors burn across the sky like beams of light scattered by molecules and particles. It's scientifically miraculous. 

Crane your neck for a better view.

In Madrid, the weather already feels like the air is on fire, and when the sun sets, the sky shows its true colors. 

Hot times, summer in the city,
 people everywhere getting down and gritty

2. Palace!

Like many places, Madrid once upon a time decided it needed a ruler, a poor scapegoat to burden with the task of heating a really large building. This is the building they chose to heat: 

The palace, too, likes sunsets.

It's important that the building has a space for reflection. 

The building has a space for quiet reflection, so it can think about politics.

3. Elephants

If you're like me, your trip to Madrid will be unforgettable. But what if Madrid forgets you? Don't take the chance! Find this random building, and look an elephant dead in the eye. That elephant will never forget. 

With his stony stare.

4. Wild Statues

Is a foreigner, I don't know much about Spain. I can only reconstruct what seems to be going on. There are machines, kicking around. I can only assume that that the baskets are statue-catchers, designed to take care of the problem of wild statues roaming the streets. I can only assume there is a bounty on their heads and hooves.  

Wild wild horses couldn't drag me away!

5. Smurfs

There is an even greater problem on the streets of Madrid than statues. And that problem is photobombing Smurfs. 

Photobombing leaves you feeling blue.

6. Turtles

There is something magical and strange and unexpected about the city. It contains things you never expected to find, like a dedicated Vegetarian restaurant in Spain (no ham at all!). But one of my top unexpected pleasures of Madrid, was definitely the miniature rain-forest habitat in the train station. (What, a train station has a greenhouse?) Yep. And it gets better. There is a pond, and it's got turtles all the way down. 

Turtles

all

the

way

down.