We miss Mexico. We miss San Miguel de Allende. We miss the Spanish language—how she is spoke—by 90% of el mundo del español; Spanish we can easily understand. We miss warm, friendly, unpretentious people. We miss relaxed, easygoing living. We feel like Calvin watching Saturday morning cartoons after eating three bowls of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Overstimulated.

That said, I'd go back to Spain in a minute. But I'd do it differently. I would:

• Reserve lodgings ahead. Mostly paradores.

• Spend less time in Madrid. The museums, the culture make it a top destination, but there's so much more to see.

• Rent or lease a car and spend much more time in the countryside.

• Go in the shoulder season of the shoulder season. November or March. Spain is a top tourist destination anymore, and it's jammed May through September. Under no circumstances would I go anywhere in Europe in the summer. I'd rather face crowds of Europeans than mobs of pudgy, tee-shirt-and-shorts-clad Americans. Like myself.

• Prepare for high costs. The dollar is weak.

Yep. In mid-2002 you could buy a euro for $.95. Today it's $1.35. But waiting until the dollar gets stronger won't work. Probably won't happen anytime soon. I'll wait a couple of years though, until the restoration work is completed and the scaffolds come down.

For years, we've visited The UK, France, Germany and others. Spain just wasn't on my radar. When I did think of it, the image in my mind was of a decaying colonial power, responsible for despoiling of the New World, itself crushed under Franco's fascist dictatorship. A non-player on the European stage. My main reason for going there this year was to enjoy a European holiday in a (probably second-rate) country where I now spoke the language.

What I discovered was one of the most exciting countries I've ever visited; a vibrant, sparkling society with a history as deep as any, combined with a 21st-century outlook.

Madrid residents are harder, edgier than Barcelonans. Barcelona is a playful city—warm, open, like L.A. while Madrid is more like New York—all business. Go to Barcelona for a good time; go to Madrid for museums.

It's arguably the best museum city in the world. But you pay a price. Madrileños jam flyers into your hands. They're always on their cellphones, working some kind of deal.

I mean, always on their cellphones.

I'd hate to be the boyfriend. He rows, she talks. To someone else. Who do you think is top dog in that relationship?

What do you do with your weekday mornings? These two young ladies dress up, find a park bench, and drink beer.

I wonder if it's legal to drink from open containers in public spaces? They should be careful or they may be called on by the fearsome Guardia Civil.

They're instantly recognizable in their tricornos, unchanged for more than 150 years.

Trusted and admired today, they once functioned as enforcers for Franco. They still enjoy more powers than police in most democracies. Members of the Guardia Civil were often involved in coup attempts, one as late as 1981.

Munching on sunflower seeds, this tattooed and pierced man looks like a likely suspect to me—someone the Guardia might be interested in.

But appearances are deceiving. He's innocently fascinated with the same puppet show as this little girl is.

Ever been blown off by the counterman at a New York diner? Think waiters in Paris are rude? Think again. I've never met hospitality workers more impatient and uncaring as Spanish ones, and Madrileños are the national champions.

For which reason I felt obliged to include this man in my gallery. He was kind, gentle, patient. His place became a regular stop for us. Here he's bringing Jean soup and me my order of deep-fried whole baby squid.

Don't knock 'em 'til you've tried 'em.

Street musicians abound. This traditional Spanish musician is playing his traditional Spanish erhu (two-stringed violin).

OK. He and it are Chinese. He drew a lot of listeners, and a lot of euros in the open erhu case at his feet.

Speaking of musicians, this little drummer came hurtling by me, banging away.

He looks like something out of Lewis Carroll.

One day, he'll sit quietly in the park, smoking, watching other little boys running around.

Madrid has many, many parks—some of them huge. They're great for people watching on a sunny Sunday.

A father helps his little girls rollerblade; a hokey-pokey master teaches moves to a young couple, their enstrollered baby nearby.

"You put your left foot out..."

The park is great for getting a little physical exercise, or for reading and getting a little tan...

... or for catching a few Zs.

This man, his head resting on his shoe, became immersed in a cloudburst seconds after this image was taken.

Crowds surged for the metro. Pickpockets worked the crush at the train doors, grateful for the good fortune occasioned by the rain. Old, familiar acquaintances by now, Jean and I exchanged greetings with them as we headed for a warm, dry café´.

When I was a little boy, we lived in a house that backed onto the Lackawanna Railroad tracks. This was during the latter days of the steam era.

I loved everything about the railroad: the sounds of locomotives chuffing, the moans of their whistles, the smell of coal smoke. I loved standing on the platform next to the locomotive, wreathed in warm, damp steam, suddenly startled by a blast from a relief valve. I loved the sounds of the train pulling out of the station, driver wheels skidding accompanied by a rapid series of exhalations—chuff... chuff... chuffchuffchuffchuff... chuff... chuff; the sounds of slack being drawn out of the couplers—clack-clack-clack-clunk-clunk.

Occasionally my father would take me on the most exciting of adventures: riding the train to New york City. After an hour which I spent with my nose pressed to the window, we'd get off at the Hoboken Terminal and take the steam ferry across the Hudson River to Canal Street in Manhattan. On the way back, we'd stop in the oyster bar in Hoboken and eat 5¢ oysters until I felt sick, while waiting for our train home.

All too soon, the steam era ended, replaced by diesel-electrics.

Railroads never were the same for me. The change had to come: steam locomotives were inefficient and polluting. But to me they were romantic. These days, whenever I travel to a place that has a train museum, visiting it becomes a top priority.

The Museo del Ferrocarril in Madrid is a good one.

On entering the museum building (an old railroad station), I was greeted by this sweet little 0-4-0 switch engine.

It hardly seems big enough to pull anything, but it was used to make up trains in Spanish switchyards a century ago. The restoration work is exquisite, and typical of all of the exhibits.

A brilliantly executed cutaway locomotive allows the mechanically-minded to examine the workings of a golden-age steam locomotive.

I spent a long time minutely tracing energy flows in this specimen.

The museum contains maybe 20 locomotives and even more rolling stock. It's not in the same class as that greatest of railway museums, the National Railway Museum in York, England, but you can easily spend a day exploring this one.

Like any good railway museum, exhibits cover more than the trains themselves: baggage handlers, for example.

Burlap sacks and brown paper packages tied with rope—a far cry from today's corrugated cardboard boxes with styrofoam inserts. Someone chose to depict the handlers as happy souls, the one on the left with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Verisimilitude at the expense of political correctness. If this place were in Indianapolis, you'd have a concerned parent's group raising hell over that cigarette.

Advertising posters, to today's travelers, seem transparent in their approach to luring customers.

"The courtesy of Spain and the train at your service"—¡Tu abuela! Once you've ridden the railroad in Spain or encountered a waiter in Madrid, you get a whole new understanding of the expression at your service. Or the word courtesy for that matter. In the USA—maybe. In Morocco—absolutely. In Spain—puhleeze.

(The figure in the poster isn't exactly a paragon of masculinity, is he? I mean, just what was the artist trying to say here? And who in Renfe management approved this thing anyway?)

Hundreds of other artifacts of belle époque industry are on display. They don't make 'em like this filigreed magneto telephone anymore. No batteries needed! Just turn the crank and talk. A simpler era indeed. Cell phones work better, but once again, no romance.

On the right, an ornately gilded device for impressing embossed seals into tickets. To discourage counterfeiting.

Much railroad building was financed through a national lottery. You turned the crank of this machine to mix and draw lottery numbers, presumably in front of impartial witnesses.

For some reason, this magnificent Fargo truck is included in the collection.

No plaque or placard explains why it's here, but for my money, you could show it in the Prado and I'd be delighted with it.

Hundreds of toy trains are on display. Not scale models—toys. Overlooked by most railroad museums.

They bring back memories of the Lionel electric trains I got for Christmas. Sometimes, my dad would even give me a turn with them.

Below, a box for a train set—an example of truly awful product packaging art.

Lets face it: Your pubescent sister just isn't gonna show that kind of interest in your train set. She's got other things on her mind. And your little brother in the blue shirt—what exactly is he thinking? Mom and dad better take him to the psychologist before things get out of hand. (Kid looks like Jack Nicholson.)

This is the way a passenger car is supposed to look. Classy. Not like some cheap piece of extruded aluminum.

It's the only thing in the whole museum that interested Jean, standing here checking it out.

The passenger car serves as the Museum coffee shop.

Weird, huh? I mean the passenger sitting at her dining car table with its elegant little lamp, talking on her cell phone—a jarring anachronism.

We visited the Railroad Museum on a Saturday, when admission is free. Got there just as it opened. By early afternoon, families had arrived and the place was crawling with kids. They were having a great time. Their fathers were having an even better time. And it was time for us retired folks to go.

I wonder what this place means to those children? Maybe no more than a museum full of 18th-century furniture means to me: interesting, but not connected to my past. The Museo del Ferrocarril, on the other hand, plays strongly into my childhood. For me, visiting these places is always an emotional experience.

Menu prices in Madrid will take your breath away, especially in the joints that cater to tourists. A sit-down dinner in a typical restaurant often runs $100 for two, without alcohol. One way to beat the cost of eating out is to patronize a taberna.

Tabernas are a kind of bar and they usually serve tapas (snacks), important for sustaining blood sugar levels in a country that doesn't eat dinner until 10-11 PM. I get weak with hunger well before restaurants open in the evening. Tapas bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, and we often eat them instead of dinner.

Tapa means "cover" in the sense of, say, a lid for a pot. There's lots of great theories as to why the Spanish call hors d'oeuvres "lids", none of which are likely to be true. Nevertheless: In the past, tapas consisted of a slice of ham or cheese, sometimes on a slice of bread, that was placed on top of a glass of wine. Some say this was to keep wind-blown dust and grit from falling into the drink. Another explanation is that the tapa prevented the smell of sour wine from reaching the drinker's nostrils. Yet another is that a law was passed requiring food to be included in the price of a drink in an effort to reduce public drunkenness, the theory being that food would reduce the impact of the alcohol.

I can attest that this strategy has not worked.

Tapas come in varieties limited only by the imagination of the tabernero. Simplest is a plate of those wonderful nutty green olives. Then there's all kinds of stuff on slices of bread: anchovies, acorn-fed ham, choriço (salami-like sausage), shrimp, aged manchego cheese with conserva de membrillo (quince paste), among many others. One of my favorites is pincho de tortilla, a wedge of something like a potato-and-egg frittata. To make a meal out of tapas, we sometimes asked for raciones—tapas still, but larger servings. I like the smaller servings, so I can taste more different varieties at a single sitting. In that way, they work like sushi.

Traditional tabernas have wooden fronts, noteworthy in this country full of stucco and stone. The wood is painted, often red, or is varnished.

Their most interesting external feature is tilework, as seen here on the Taberna Tirso de Molina, named for a 17th-century dramatist. Of course, having expropriated his name, the taberna was obliged to include his portrait on the façade.

Unaccountably, Taberna Tirso de Molina devotes the remainder of its extensive tile murals to the spirit of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Other tilework is devoted more to advertising than to bellas artes, but is no less compelling for that. Here's an image from a beer ad.

She looks like a dreamy Maxfield Parrish subject.

Another taberna illustrates 19th-century winemaking; shown here is wine being transferred from fermenting tanks to barrels for aging.

A Santa Clara Valley ultra-premium winemaker I know uses a cast iron pump just like the one above. Claims it doesn't "bruise" the wine like electric ones do.

La Taberna Encantada uses a tile mural for a nameplate...

... and to create an innocent image. Not open when I went by, I couldn't check to see if the place was in fact enchanted. I'm guessing it's dark and full of cigarette smoke, like all the rest of them.

You can fill a day, enjoying the artwork decorating these places. Many are concentrated between the Lavapies area and the Puerto del Sol. It's a kind of outdoor museum, with the advantage over the Prado that the exhibits will feed you.