Saturday, November 6, 2010

Madrid (Spain Pt. 1)



It’s been difficult to catch up with the blog with all of our various situations regarding Internet access, but I’m going to try to put as much up as I can at the moment. We’re currently in Tours, France, but I’ll post about that in a bit. I need to write about Spain. Lovely, Lovely Eh-Spain.

I think we immediately liked Spain, due to the fact that it was much easier to get into than Ireland. All we did was walk off the plane and get our passport stamped. No third degree, no threats of deportation.
No, Ireland, I’m still not over it.



Madrid was our first destination. We stayed in a hostel right above one of the Metro stops, which made it a breeze to get to. After checking-in (with the ironically Irish front desk clerk), we dropped our bags and headed out on a “get-to-know-the-place-you’re-in” walk.

In the course of a few hours, we managed to see fire dancers, fountains, prostitutes, a horse, and many huge cured hams. Welcome to Spain.





The next day we slept in, very very late. That left a large portion of the day missing, so all we really had time to do was grab some brunch and attempt to find a train station so we could book our trip to Barcelona. We immediately headed in the wrong direction without knowing it and ended stumbling upon an amazing palace and garden. We even found another train station where we were able to get by with enough Spanish to book the right seats with our eurail passes. Success out of failure. We topped the night off with some PB&J for dinner.





Day three in Madrid was an added bonus. We decided to stay and extra day due to the sleeping in and time spent booking the next leg of the journey yesterday. It was a great idea. We headed out for a stress free walk about the city. We hit a lot of the major sights and had a marvelous little picnic in one of Madrid’s large city parks.



Our last morning in Madrid did not start out well. The combination of not knowing that spain is in a different time zone then Ireland, and something strange in the free breakfast (most likely the way too strong instant coffee) set both of us off on the wrong foot. The day consisted of sickness and missing trains. Boo.

Up Next: Barcelona