Instead of the comfortable lobby and early check-in I'd been daydreaming of, the hostal was an inconspicuous buzzer that no one answered, so my luggage and I wandered around central Madrid until check-in time. It was bright and noisy and full of charm, and there was a street performer dressed as a shrub, or some kind of Christmas sniper, who stood still for long periods and then jumped at people to startle them. This set an impossible standard for Madrid's other buskers, and, rather than trying to meet it, they mostly just stood around in elaborate animal costumes. Busking used to be a skilled trade. If I were dressed as a gorilla, I like to think I'd at least stage fights with people in other costumes.
The hotel, when I got into it, was a floor or two of a grand old building with a squirrelly little stairwell elevator. The room was nice enough, and the plumbing made sneezing noises at random intervals, which was very exciting. It was in the middle of Gran Via. At one end of this busy and historic street is the Plaza de Cibele, a traffic circle surrounding a statue of Cybele in a lion-drawn chariot that would be no less stuck should she come to life: Madrid drivers aren't going to let you merge just because you're a holy mystery of the ancient world. Cybele and her lions would take the metro, where they would attract no particular notice.
Another point of interest was the Tim Hortons "Canadian Coffee House" across the street. Open-minded Madrilenos were visible inside giving it a cautious try. Will Tim Hortons coffee culture be the next global sensation? People have been duped into wearing plaid flannel before, and the new generation knows nothing of grunge.
Its unique eating hours make Madrid a fine city for the jet-lagged. Your random wakings might put you on a delicious schedule. You might even make some anthropological discovery by surprising everyone having high tea at 3 AM on a Tuesday. However, the language spoken here is nothing like the one I once tried to learn. That was a simple tongue for describing library locations and the properties of objects, while this one runs wildly off in all directions. I arrived primed to talk about what colour the hat is, and it simply didn't come up.
I saw sights. The palace is a vast and graceful block, closed when I visited for some official function on which incredibly slow motorcades were converging. A small crowd of tourists nevertheless lingered across the street, hopeful of some sort of spectacle. Maybe there would be a changing of the guard, or the king would come out and wrestle a bear. Pushing along past the ornamental garden lined with statues of past monarchs leads to a convent and a little square with a large wire sphere covered in lights. If I understood the conversations of passersby correctly, motorcyclists dressed as Santa and Jesus will drive into it and whirr around and around, eventually colliding in an explosion of new religions.
One of the unexpected things in Madrid is just beyond: a small Egyptian temple, donated by Egypt when it needed help saving important sites from flooding and found it had more temples than friends. The temple of Debod is not hugely important, but its history is strange, and there is always something going on there. For example, a man doing one-armed handstands beside it, probably after being kicked out of the nearby yoga group for being a showoff. Admittedly, I may just be jealous because no one follows the Instagram account where I do shaky tripod headstands in mundane settings.
There is a guard at the Temple of Debod, and he is an unhappy man. He has to keep tourists off the grounds and has nothing but a whistle with which to do so. One couple ignored all his whistle blasts and shouts and then actually came closer to get some more selfies with him glowering helplessly in the background. If he were properly equipped, he could have pepper sprayed them. Or do they need to hire a falconer, like an airport? "Go, Windlord!" and the tourists would cover their heads and scatter in terror.
Walking in Madrid is perfectly pleasant. Drivers are not patient, but they are fair, and there are hardly any signs of the civilizational collapse that the combination of e-bikes and food delivery apps has triggered elsewhere. Cyclists are rare, except for the Dutch tour groups that sweep happily around and around the few safe paths that exist as if in some commuter-bike criterium.
Niche museums abound. If Madrid needed half a dozen dedicated to ham, that need has been met. Really, there's no reason for any ham enthusiast, no matter what ham-making discipline or form or aspect of ham particularly interests them, to leave Spain disappointed.
And there are the other museums. I visited the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, and can reveal that they have many nice paintings.
