Madrid is the place that taught me life, ordinary everyday life, can be just fun! It was thanks to the local people who are so deeply dedicated to enjoying the simple life's pleasures such as eating, talking, walking, laughing, telling stories being together that i was able emotionally to survive a deep crisis in my life.

Just walking the streets in the centre can be enormously stress relieving, if one has the time to just "walk" and watch the people. Taking a walk from the most beautiful post-office building in the world at the Plaza de la Cibeles toward and through Gran Via - mixing with the crowd gaping at the shop vitrins with luxurious items is fun! Watching what people do, how they look, who is alone, who has somebody with them they they love, or like - or not particularly, can be most rewarding.

Or taking a walk up fro la Cibeles toward Paseo de la Castellana, along the broad bulwark with the cascading fountain and the cast iron glass Pavillion - a walk way specifically built for leisurely walking and enjoying every single step with the beauty of the surroundings. Reaching Plaza de Colon one really needs to have a look at the magnificent fountain and the modest but most important monument to Christopher Columbus, the foreigner who helped to make Spain great, offering the kingdom the greatest period of growth, grandeur, splendour and conquest which changed this country forever.

then, one inclined towards elegance should go to the streets of exquisite fashion such as Calle Velazquez [Velazquez Street], and soak in the luxury of dressing beautifully for pleasure and joy of life.

After that, one should take a long walk through El Retiro, a beautiful park built by a king for himself, to have semi-rural fun in the heart of the city.

Puerta del Sol is a place of almost magic powers, and always gives me shivers of being in the presence of something divine when i stand there - and i don't think it is just in the name: Gate of Sun, with its fairy-tale legendary heroes connotations. Although it does not have the architectural precision of Plaza Mayor - it has a soul that gives me a sense of being alive and having the capacity for greater things, an inspiration and faith in greater possibilities and lifting above the mundane requirements of daily life.

most of all i love standing on the pavement on Puerta del Sol where the marble engraved stone built into the pavement says: KILOMETRE ZERO. it is as if one standing there can leave behind all past mistakes, all sorrows and pain - and PHYSICALLY start walking into new life, into new possibilities, new chances, new opportunities - and through the Gate of Sun! itself I think all of us need at some stage of life to go back to KILOMETRE ZERO and have a sporting chance to start all-over again, leaving behind all the bad stuff.

Plaza Mayor has a formal magic of its own - a place where kings feel at home, perfectly square, open, coolly elegant, with the statue of king Phillip III, and which makes you feel like someone important sipping your drinks and chatting.

One of the most enchanting and breath-taking walks is from Plaza Mayor down steep dark enclosed by buildings steps towards the outside walls of the ancient Madrid, where the city ended in Medieval times. you walk down to a completely different world, where tradesmen had their shops and the streets are named after each different trade, with enamelled plaques and tiled names still visible there after a few hundred years. A walk there takes you back a few hundred years, just in a few minutes! it is well worth taking each step very slowly and contemplating the other people who walked the same stones, among the same buildings, with almost the same shop windows - years and years and years ago, in different times, with so little changed!

Madrid is the place that taught me life, ordinary everyday life, can be just fun! It was thanks to the local people who are so deeply dedicated to enjoying the simple life's pleasures such as eating, talking, walking, laughing, telling stories being together that i was able emotionally to survive a deep crisis in my life.

Just walking the streets in the centre can be enormously stress relieving, if one has the time to just "walk" and watch the people. Taking a walk from the most beautiful post-office building in the world at the Plaza de la Cibeles toward and through Gran Via - mixing with the crowd gaping at the shop vitrins with luxurious items is fun! Watching what people do, how they look, who is alone, who has somebody with them they they love, or like - or not particularly, can be most rewarding.

Or taking a walk up fro la Cibeles toward Paseo de la Castellana, along the broad bulwark with the cascading fountain and the cast iron glass Pavillion - a walk way specifically built for leisurely walking and enjoying every single step with the beauty of the surroundings. Reaching Plaza de Colon one really needs to have a look at the magnificent fountain and the modest but most important monument to Christopher Columbus, the foreigner who helped to make Spain great, offering the kingdom the greatest period of growth, grandeur, splendour and conquest which changed this country forever.

then, one inclined towards elegance should go to the streets of exquisite fashion such as Calle Velazquez [Velazquez Street], and soak in the luxury of dressing beautifully for pleasure and joy of life.

After that, one should take a long walk through El Retiro, a beautiful park built by a king for himself, to have semi-rural fun in the heart of the city.

Puerta del Sol is a place of almost magic powers, and always gives me shivers of being in the presence of something divine when i stand there - and i don't think it is just in the name: Gate of Sun, with its fairy-tale legendary heroes connotations. Although it does not have the architectural precision of Plaza Mayor - it has a soul that gives me a sense of being alive and having the capacity for greater things, an inspiration and faith in greater possibilities and lifting above the mundane requirements of daily life.

most of all i love standing on the pavement on Puerta del Sol where the marble engraved stone built into the pavement says: KILOMETRE ZERO. it is as if one standing there can leave behind all past mistakes, all sorrows and pain - and PHYSICALLY start walking into new life, into new possibilities, new chances, new opportunities - and through the Gate of Sun! itself I think all of us need at some stage of life to go back to KILOMETRE ZERO and have a sporting chance to start all-over again, leaving behind all the bad stuff.

Plaza Mayor has a formal magic of its own - a place where kings feel at home, perfectly square, open, coolly elegant, with the statue of king Phillip III, and which makes you feel like someone important sipping your drinks and chatting.

One of the most enchanting and breath-taking walks is from Plaza Mayor down steep dark enclosed by buildings steps towards the outside walls of the ancient Madrid, where the city ended in Medieval times. you walk down to a completely different world, where tradesmen had their shops and the streets are named after each different trade, with enamelled plaques and tiled names still visible there after a few hundred years. A walk there takes you back a few hundred years, just in a few minutes! it is well worth taking each step very slowly and contemplating the other people who walked the same stones, among the same buildings, with almost the same shop windows - years and years and years ago, in different times, with so little changed!

Eating in Madrid is fun fun fun!

"Cafe con churros" - is a must every day, of course, coffee with long shaped fried pastry - such a simple pleasure first thng in the morning!

one can "do" a bar crawl - which is what the locals do, have a cup of coffe with some "tapas" - little nibbly bits - in one bar, and going a few steps to another one, for another drink with different tapas and different surroundings. one can visit several of them each night, and that's what the locals do, they do not stay in the same place for long, and crawl from one to another.

Near Puerta del Sol there is a place, i can't recall the exact street, an old winery which offers thousands of wines, any that have been produced, and one can ask, for example, for a hundred years old Malaga wine - and get it served like it is from last yers' harvest, without apparnet fuss. But they know very well how special this place is, and mostly people go thre who have the palate to appreciate exquisite offerings of wine type. Of course, fools and horses come too.

Eating is best in little reastaurants in the back streets of Gran Via and all other main streets. i hope this has not changed in the few years since I've had the privilege to be there, the little places with most elegant personal service in the simplest surroundings, clean, with good fresh food, and pride in serving a customer. I have never seen better waiters and service anywhere in the world, mostly perhaps because they were happy to serve and happy to see the customer pleased, happy to share the food they eat themselves, with the feeling that it is in the nutrition that one finds an important part of joy of life. No fancy restaurant with their pretentious and self-important waiters have ever come near the quality of service offered by the simple Spanish waiters in the back street little places.

Eating at night in Madrid is an adventure for a traveller. I was once invited on a date, to meet at 9PM! in Europe one more or less gets ready to go home from a night out at that time. The food orders are not even taken till 10PM, for goddness sake! nobody walks out before midnight, that would be being a spoil-sport! that one needs to go for some drinks to night clubs, to finish the evening on a nice note. Going home at the wee hours, and not bothering to be too quiet about it, disregarding the sleeping neighbours...

a traveller on a budget may benefit from going to the markets and buying their own fruit and supplies to cook breakfast and a few meals in a hostel with such facilities, which makes staying quite economical, even with a bottle of table wine.

getting invited as a guest to someone's home is a rare tret, and should be sought at any possibililty.

Spanish wines are delicious, healthy, not particularly strong, and a must with all main meals. Try many varieties, but i recomend Rioja - a deliciously "down to earth" unpretentious taste that goes well with simple meals and does not seem to have preservatives which give a funny aftertaste or headaches. The Spanish like to finish a meal with a glas of liquore, which is quite decadent for an ordinary lunch in other countries.

when in Madrid i was introduced by the locals to drinking a glass of "CUBA LIBRE" - a drink made of coca-cola with rum. it was named "Cuba Libre" ("Free Cuba") as a protest against the sugar embargo placed on Cuba with the intent to crush and starve Fidel Castro and Cuban people who wanted independence from the mighty USA. Spain defied the embargo and bought Fidel's sugar, and people drank the pleasant drink, especially refreshing on a hot summer day. Even today that is what i enjoy after a walk in on a hot day, and i still feel like saying "Viva Fidel", long live Fidel! It is a good feeling to combine business (having to have a drink) with pleasure of drinking and giving a patriotic sort of supprt in solidarity with oppressed poeple.

What one must NOT MISS OUT ON in Madrid is to drink the chocolate by a cupful - because it is never offered as good anywhere else in the whole wide world! The Spanish perfected the drinking chocolate like the Swiss and Belgians the cold. It really has "magic" in it, with or without "churros"