We travelled to Madrid on the 25th of October via Spain's high speed rail system. We were treated very well and served a delicious hot breakfast. We were served fresh baked rolls with tomato jam and extra virgin olive oil.......remember Spain is the #1 olive exporter. Then on to huevos revolto (scrambled eggs) with baked potatoes. These are über modern trains that travel at 300 km/hr from city centre to city centre. We arrived at Madrid Atocha station in central Madrid and had a 10 minute cab ride to out hotel in the Salamanca district of Madrid. Madrid is a city of 3.5 million people and is the capital of Spain. We have been in the city now for 3 days and are starting to get the feel of the place. We have been to 2 art museums and have taken tours on the hop on hop off bus. First the buildings in central Madrid are incredible. The construction on the Grand Via during the 20s and 30s produced some of the most incredible architecture I have seen anywhere. There is one incredible office building after the next. There was obviously lots of cash in the system in the early part of the 20th century in Madrid. There is a feeling of tension when we travel to large public squares in the city. There is a big police presence and there are public demonstrations which is disrupting some services but we have seen no evidence of it. The public monuments and fountains are everywhere, commemorating kings and queens, revolutions,discovering America, battles won and battles lost. The amount of space in the city devoted to garden and green space is incredible. Today we went past the stadium that hosts the Real Madrid soccer (football) games and it is a huge modern stadiums that can handle 110,000 spectators basically I central Madrid . The Salamanca district is a smaller area of shopping and residential bordered on the south by the Retire gardens, which are the largest gardens in Madrid. We have been to two immense art galleries, the first was the Prado which houses the finest collection of Spanish 16th to 18th century paintings in the world. We saw painters such as Greco, Valazquez, Goya, Zurbaran as well as some others like Rubens, Caravaggio and Rafael, an exhausting collection. Today we went to the Reina Sofia gallery which is 20th and 21st century Spanish art, again a huge building but we went in specifically to see Picasso's Guernica. This painting is a very important work which depicts the Nazi bombing of Guernica and was painted as propaganda for the Paris worlds fair. The bombing was at the request of Franco against the defenceless civilian population. Spain has had a long and tumultuous history, punctuated by some crazy events. My first impressions of Madrid are very positive, it has the most impressive collection of public spaces, monuments and buildings I have seen either in Europe or North America. There seems to be no shortage of money to build public infrastructure. The people are very fashionable and sophisticated and lead a very high quality of life. This doesn't square with what I saw in the press before we left Canada as far as debt and deficits and public disorder. We will continue our investigation of Madrid and report our future findings. Adios