Look at a map of Spain and point at the center. You'll locate the country's capital and one of Europe's most beautiful cities: Madrid. This popular destination is considered a city of contrasts with its abundant historic sites, resting in the shadows of modern skyscrapers.
History
This city of over 3 million people is proud of Western Europe's largest royal palace, and some consider it to be Madrid's most beautiful building.
Inside the Royal Palace 2,800 rooms are decorated in glory with museumquality furniture and artwork. Tourists can tour 50 of these large and splendid rooms.
Art
The internationally respected Prado Museum is the largest and most impressive art gallery in Spain. Founded in 1819, it is filled with works of art that feature the world's most comprehensive collection of Spanish paintings.
Shopping
Madrid has some of Europe's best shopping malls, and potential buyers love to look through the stores looking for bargains. But for 500 years, shoppers have gathered to an extremely large outdoor flea market known as El Rastro where they find everything from antiques to CDs.
Entertainment
No trip to Madrid is complete without seeing a performance of Spain's famous art form, flamenco. Every day, flamenco performers sing, dance or play the guitar in small cafes and grand theaters alike.
Food
Madrid has a wide variety of restaurants, but because the Spanish typically eat late at about 9 or 10 pm, it's difficult to find good dinner food earlier. If you get hungry before then, the best solution is to try a tapas bar where light snacks are served. Be sure to try the jamon, drycured ham — Spain is famous for it.
Time for a break
After a day of touring, relax in 350acre Retiro Park with its beautiful gardens, fish pond and lake. It is the perfect place to reflect on all you've enjoyed in this impressive Spanish city.
Disease, poverty, hate, love — Charles Dickens' stories opened his readers' eyes to the most important themes of his age. Two hundred years later, his stories still speak volumes across the world, proving that Dickens' legacy (遗产) was far greater than just "greatliterature".
February 7 marks the 200th anniversary of the writer's birthday. To mark this date, BBC writer Alex Hudson listed six things Dickens gave the modern world. Let's take a look at two of them.
A White Christmas
Dickens is described as "the man who invented Christmas" — not the religious festival, but the cultural aspects that we associate with the festive season today.
In the early 19th century, Christmas was barely worth mentioning, according to critic and writer Leigh Hunt. The committee which ran the Conservative Party even held ordinary business meetings on Christmas Day — unthinkable in the West nowadays, when everyone but the most necessary workers takes at least three days off.
Many people believe that Dickens' popular descriptions of the festive period became a blueprint for generations to come. In his classic novel, A Christmas Carol, he not only put forward the idea of snow at Christmas, but also painted a picture of glowing warmth — "home enjoyments, affections and hopes".
In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "Dickens can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas."
"Dickensian" poverty
Dickens was one of the first to take an honest look at the underclass and the poor of Victorian London.
He helped popularize the term "red tape" to describe situations where people in power use needless amounts of bureaucracy (官僚作风) in a way that particularly hurts the weaker and poorer members of society.
"Dickensian" has now become a powerful word for describing an unacceptable level of poverty. In 2009, when the president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the UK wanted to talk about poverty in some areas of Britain, she did not use words like "terrible" or "horrific"， but rather described it as "life mirroring the times of Dickens".
What do Tom Sawyer and Jumping Frogs have in common? Stories about both of them were created by one man: Mark Twain. Twain was four years old when his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, located on the west bank of the Mississippi. Twain grew up there and was fascinated with (使……入迷) life along the river — the steamboats, the giant lumber (木头) rafts, and the people who worked on them.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is one of Twain's best loved short stories, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of his most famous novels. Both these works are celebrated by events held during National Tom Sawyer Days, which originated in the late 1950s and became national in the 1960s. Children enter their frogs in the jumping contest during National Tom Sawyer Days. There's also a fence painting contest to see who can paint the fastest. The idea for this contest comes from a scene in Tom Sawyer, in which Tom has been told to paint the fence in front of the house he lives in. It's a beautiful day, and he would rather be doing anything else. As his friends walk by, he makes them believe that it's fun to paint, and they join in the "fun". By the end of the day, the fence has three coats of paint!
Although the story of Tom Sawyer is a fiction (虚构的事), it's based on facts. If you go to Hannibal, you'll see the white fence, which still stands at Twain's boyhood home.
