Madrid is an amazing town. It's suppose to be larger than Barcelona but it feels much smaller and certainly there aren't as many tourists running around this place. Madrid is very laid back. There's a lot of stuff going on but no one is in a big rush to do them. I love this place. My first day was spent checking out the main attractions, such as Palacio Real de Madrid, the royal palace. Like many of the cities I've been to, you can pretty much get to all the things you want to see in Madrid by foot. The most interesting part of Madrid took place on today, though. On Sundays only, Madrid holds bullfights. Today being Sunday, I went to a bullfight at Las Ventas. It was amazing. For 11,50 Euro we sat about 7 rows from the ring(?) and saw all of the action. (Seating at the other side of the arena cost 2 euro less but the bullfighters never brought the fight over to that side of the ring. I guess they knew that our side of the stadium paid more money for seats so we deserved the better views.) We were gung-ho about going today because they advertised it as the running of the young bulls. We thought, well the running of the young bulls must mean that they're weren't going to kill the bulls. It must be bull training so they know what to do when the time comes, right? Why would you want to kill young bulls? Well, there were only about 500 people there - it was raining a little - and at least 400 of them were tourists and I think they had the same idea as us because you should have heard the response after they killed the first bull...there was a very loud gasp as the bull stumbled and died. As they dragged the field - just like baseball but instead of making the playing field even it was to get rid of the bull's blood - at least 150 people left after the first fight and another 100 left after the second killing. It got so bad that when one of the bullfighters got gored, the crowd cheered. Three hours and 7 bulls later the show ended.
After that, off to Gwyneth Paltrow's favorite - and many suggest the World's second most important - museum: Museo Nacional del Prado. (How could I not go do something so highly recommended by Gwyn?) This is a picture of Dwarf with the emblem of Madrid...bear eating berries.
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