Madrid - Dos: El Flamenco!!

So here are all the photos I took in about 90 minutes.  I had my camera on "auto boost" so if I clicked through the photos real fast, the dancers moved in stop action.

 And the grand mama of the troupe.  Someone told me that every flamenco troup has an older woman who performs.  Don't know if that's true, but I just loved this old girl:

Madrid!




For whatever reason, this bear is the symbol of Madrid.

  This is the swell room we had and the view from the tiny little terrace. 



directly across from our room


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to the left

 

and to the right

 Some of the swell buildings of Madrid.  They look great even in the rain:



This is a close-up of the top of the building in the photo above




If our Spanish held up, this is a phone company??!!  Sign said "Telefono" or something like that.

 Gene is an afficiando of finding the "baselines" throughout the United States, so he was thrilled beyond thrilled to discover "Kilometro Cero", the center of Madrid and indeed I think the center of Spain

Spain apparently loves trompe l'oeil.  This beauty was spotted only a short walk from our hotel room.  The Spanish also put up trompe l'oeil canvasses to hide construction sites in main tourist spots.  We really liked this one:


This was our final night in Madrid and for our entire vacation -- a visit to the (Guinness book verified) oldest restaurant in the world.  It has been operating on this spot since 1725 and played host to the likes of Ernest Hemmingway and Francisco Goya.  Pretty cool.  The meal was great, the service impeccable, the sangria perfect for a nice functional buzz.  I present BOTIN:



There are 3 floors.  We went up the stairs aginst the wall to the first floor. 



Don't order the suckling pig unless you want to see this brought to your table.  Didn't matter to me and I et it all!  Yum!

Want more Spain and less chit-chat?

This blog will be for all the photos that didn't make it on the original blog and believe me -- there are a boatload of 'em.  It's mostly for my enjoyment, but I'd love to share them with you, so here we go.