Spain

On the way back from the Egypt trip in March 2006, I'm catching a red-eye flight to Madrid. I'm hoping to find a market, some churros and hot chocolate, or maybe a disco. Then experience a fantastic saturday night in the legendary Madrid nightlife. Ah, this is gonna be good.

I discussed the possibilities briefly(advice here).

Any advice? add it to the wiki!

Hexar:
I spent about 5-6 days in Madrid in November 2003 doing a "short term mission trip" with Campus Crusade to help some missionaries there throw a Thanksgiving cultural exchange event there. The metropolitan area surrounding Madrid consists of over 5.6 million people over 378 square miles. There are 19 universities, the top two being the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (117,000 students) followed by the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. I'm pretty sure I've been to both Complutense and Alcala. One of the most interesting things about Madrid is the subway system, the Metro. Travelling anywhere nearly requires using the Metro and making a few transfers to get where you're going. I believe we typically paid for things using Euros instead of dollars. There are lots of awesome breakfast bars which serve cafe con leche and churros and it's really awesome. Everyone in Madrid speaks Spanish with a lisp, but it's not nearly as loose as in southern Spain. A good number of Spaniards do know English but they respect you more if you try to speak Spanish first. I've heard that there are lots of pickpockets in Madrid, but especially when leaving the airport, so having one of those non-pickable wallets might come in handy. There's a lot more information available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid.