I then painted my nails a deep, dark red, in the vain hope that everyone will be too mesmerized by my hands to notice my hair.

Silly, silly Dilettante.

Silly, silly hair. If it doesn't start showing some cooperation soon, it will find itself in a buzz cut ASAP, if not sooner.

Then again, that's probably what it wants.

The first thing you notice when driving through Spain is the livestock. The land itself is beautiful, and the fields are filled with herds of sheep. And cows. And bulls.

Great, big, hulking bulls, looming over the landscape. You can see them from miles away, outlined against the horizon, brooding on the top of hills, or standing vigilantly at the side of the road. It's rather disconcerting.

Then you get closer, and realize that the bulls in question are huge wooden cut-outs, painted black.

The bull is the national symbol of Spain, and the Spaniards are proud of it. I think it's kind of neat.

Conversely, the first thing you notice when you drive through Madrid is the traffic. It's rather hard not to, in fact. The place was jam packed with cars, every single one of which was looking for a place to park. The city center has quite a few public parking lots. Unfortunately, all of them were full.

All of them.

Parking places on the street, aside from being one hundred percent occupied, were mostly reserved for residents. They usually had to pay for the privilege, mind you, but at least they had a shot at any suddenly open spaces.

We crawled around the city center for at least an hour and a half, until finally we found a private garage down a dark alley of a side street. Once we parked the car, it only took us 20 minutes or so to find a hotel, and that was after looking at several. It was even in an excellent location. With breakfast!

We went back to fetch our luggage, but left the car where it was until morning, not that we had much of a choice, really. Then it was off to find something to eat and, perhaps more importantly after all that traffic, drink.

I like Madrid. It seems so alive, somehow. Vital. The streets are full of people, and the bars and restaurants, and absolutely everybody seems to be having a grand old time. It's a good thing, and we did our best to join in.

It wasn't hard. The first thing we did was go to an Irish pub. It's pretty much a tradition of ours, and quite often the Irish pubs are not full of Irish, or even British or Americans or other anglophones, but locals. It's never a bad plan because most of the time it's easy to strike up a conversation and find out where all the good places to go and things to do are.

Not that we had much of a problem in that regard. I had done my research before we got there, and we were right in the middle of where the action was and there was no shortage of nifty places to go.

Did I mention that I like Madrid?

It's time for me to go now. Elvis has been diligent and gone to the gym. He's back now, and is eagerly looking forward to his reward-- i.e. The Pub.

And the Evil Late Night Bar has finished being closed for the holidays. We've missed it, and we are certainly not the only ones. We haven't even missed it the most. In any case, Everybody will be there. Everybody that we want to see, anyway, or at least mostly everybody, and I better cut this out before it gets even more convoluted. To summarize: we're going to down to the pub, and after it closes and they kick us out, we're going to the Evil Late Night Bar.

You know what that means, don't you?

It's going to be a good night. A long night, but a good night.

See you tomorrow.