Put on your crosses, your flamenco shoes, your tasting buds – you will never sample olives like the olives in Spain – your experimental gusto, your spirit and your joy: We landed in Madrid after a long night, and really no one from Delta was there to show the passengers how one got to immigration, but we all followed whomever was in front, and we made it. No more forms to fill out or inspections of baggage. It’s friendly travel in Europe. We burst through the doors of the rather old part of the airport into a blast of heat that grabs your in the breath like a knock-out, but nothing worse than Memphis.

There was Madrid laid out before us – not only in a variety of architectural styles from Belle Epoque to Chicago Deco to New York ‘20ties and Gothic, but it logs in as a special place where there is sufficient underground water to keep all needs supplied, sponsored by four ranges of mountains in the 8000 to 12,000 height range : Sierra Nevadas, Pyrannees, Cantabrian and the Galitian. As well, there are a multitude of Roman-based natural languages: Castilian, Catalan, Galician (Portuguese fits here) and then there’s Basque. Best there are 300 days of sun, good sun, clean air without the pollution and haze, so that light from the heavens brighten everything ten-fold. Even the taxis, and there are thousands, are white with red mock Nike-stripes and every one is immaculate. Spaniards have what we need so terribly in the States, speed trains than can get you places in 1/4 the time. And it saves the environment, and the corrupt competition of the oil and gas nations.

On the plains were rain mainly concentrates is the home of Miguel Cervantes, author of Man of La Mancha where we learned to dream the impossible dreams from a cranky, lanky dreamer wannabe knight and his chubby realist side-kick or “esquire” Pancho Sanza, who road a donkey to the knights tall skinny out-to-pasture horse. He died 400 years ago, ironically within a few days of Europe’s other great play-write, William Shakespeare in England. Cervantes based his story on a nut case in a small town who was obsessed with books on chivalry and knight hood, and ended up fighting for a beautiful woman (who could sing) wrongfully stuck in prison. Women here can hold their heads high – there’s a lot of Isabella and Ferdinand congeniality – Isabella, 18, married Ferdinand, 17, only because he was willing to sign a pact that they would share the leadership together, and she really had more land and power than he had, i.e. she was wealthier, and the two together They backed adventuresome sailor Christopher Columbus who founded our shores, thinking he’d hit India, and he still thought that at the time of his death.

Our hotel, the old, classy Ritz, is within walking distance of the Prado Museum, one of the best five museums in the world. Dodging the sun’s sharp rays, seeking shady areas, we walked to the enormous museum, but first stopping at a lonely San Geronimo for some shade, and then we headed back across the street to the museum. Once in the museum I was surrounded by the world’s great art, the pieces that moved history forward, like Bosch’s Garden of Delights (a triptych) and three galleries filled with giant Ruben’s canvases, and the precise Spanish painters like Velazquez and Murillo. Every historical period well represented – and my feet getting tireder buy the second – I was not leaving until I had found the out-of-the-way gallery where Goya’s dark paintings were displayed. Oh my gosh! talk about emotional – He tore out his gut painting the pain and death-walk in his life. There are black witches, black goats, black crazy monsters, a gory Saturn devouring his son, and my able-to-weep all time favorite, Drowning Dog, which has the simple head of a dog, a mutt, caught between a disturbing sky and a rock in which he was overwhelmed.

The hotel’s garden area is ideal for an afternoon crushed mint and green tea (with crushed ice) drink, and a time to fight with the sparrows, anxious for the tiny plate of galletitas (hard cookies), which if one got one in his mouth, flew away with everyone trying to hold him down so they could rob it from him. The entire afternoon someone plays the piano, and there is a peace and cool breeze that surrounds us like a soft sponge. We visited a famous “Tabladas “Carboneras – in a smoky hole in the ground (I guess, it was shady) where on oak floors four flamenco dancers tore up the floor and our emotions with their powerful heel banging and finger snapping as well as posing as if they were ready to give the bull his overdue sword while telling tales of woe, rejection, love or loveless, and all enhanced by two singers and two guitarists. The tiny place was packed, and the ears hurt afterwards for the incredible loud rhythmns of their skilled heels and toes. One of the best restaurants in the world (Spain has 5 in the top fifty), is Club Allude, where we were able to experience the ultimate in tapas – sort of a cross between tapas and omasake – fourteen courses, each one a work of art, each one incorporating the freshest of produce from the Madrid countryside. The creator is a well-respected woman chef, who came out at the end for her acculades. Good night, this one.