After 7+ hours, my plane arrived in Madrid, Spain. After getting the wrinkles out of my butt, I hopped off the airplane, got my things, and went to meet my friend Enrique. Not there. So I waited. Waited. Started getting nervous, so I gave him a call. He was in the airport, but the airport was so stunningly large that he was still 10 minutes away.

Photo: The mountains north of Madrid

Eventually, I saw him scurrying through a crowd of people. It was awesome to see him again! We started walking through about a million miles of Madrid airport, and finally reached the Metro stop (Madrid's subway system). Cruised to the exit nearest his house and hopped off.

This was when I began to realize I wasn't in Kansas anymore. In Spain, you walk everywhere. While in theory this is very good, natural, healthy for the environment, if you are a rather sedentary Tennessean used to hopping in the car and flitting about, it will come as a shock. We walked half a mile or so until we came to the house Enrique was staying at. This is jolly good for you, unless you're carrying two large suitcases and have just spent the past 7 hours riding on an jet. I didn't know that this was just the warm-up...

We walked through the courtyard of the house, where I met Mac. Mac is the guy who owns the house. He's a very nice guy, but he holds some rather interesting opinions... I dropped off my luggage, had a quick change of clothes, and then Enrique and I caught the subway. We were going on a tour of Madrid...

We rode the subway to [INSERT STOP HERE], and hopped off. The first things I saw upon reaching the surface were the leaning towers (the two highest skyscrapers in Madrid). The photo below is just one of them.

Photo: One of the two Leaning Towers

We caught a bus, and drove around the center of Madrid. Got off, and walked to the palace.

Photo: The Royal Palace

Photo: A better picture of the Royal Palace (from a postcard)

After the palace, we went to the Gran Plaza, the main plaza in Madrid. It's an absolutely wonderful place to sit back, enjoy a couple of coffee, and tune the world out. Yes, I know I'm wearing a white shirt in this picture, it's because we walked through the Plaza a dozen times over the next day or so, and this the best picture.

Photo: The Gran Plaza

By this time, I was really starting to get hungry, so we hunkered down at a nice restaurant and ordered some paella. The first time I had paella was in the US, and it was a rice dish with sausage. What arrived on my table had eyeballs, claws, and other assorted things popping out. I don't generally like eating things that are looking back at me, but starvation was setting in, so I nibbled the rice around the bigger crustaceans and called it a meal.

Photo: Mat at a typical Spanish restaurant

Photo: Paella, with assorted sea creatures...

After dinner, I was getting pretty tired after walking approximately 10 miles (no kidding), so we rambled back to Mac's house and crashed. I woke up a few hours later, and Enrique took me to visit his friends (Paqui had curly-hair, Virginia was the tall one, and I'm sorry to say I can't remember the names of the rest. One of them looked like Jude Law's twin brother though.) We had a wonderful home-cooked meal of lasagna at their house. Afterward, we went back home and crashed.