Madrid

A work training trip took us to Madrid. I had a week of training and flew over on the 20th. Got in a taxi outside the airport to go to the hotel and the driver said yes he understood where I wanted to go to the taxi rank guy and then drove 2 meters out of the rank and pulled over to examine the address. Said he did not know and drove round in circles and all over the place for ages. I wrote down some things in Spanish but he played dumb - I am sure he knew where he needed to go and just wanted to up the fare. It was getting dark so I made a few calls to let Andrew and work know and so the guy would overhear and not head off somewhere unknown to me! Eventually he pulled in at the hotel ... funny that how he found it without looking at a map book! Found out from some other girls on the training that most of us had been rorted on arrival, one girls was nearly double mine! No one cared, work expenses!

Anyway, as work had left accommodation to the last minute I ended up in a different hotel to the training had to cab it across each morning, bit of a pain, but after the course most days we all headed into the city on the metro for dinner and sight seeing then metro-ed it back to the training hotel, followed by me cabbing it back to my hotel. Probably the worse hotel Ive stayed in. Very nice appearance wise but noisy as hell, some function on and I got bugger all sleep most of the time we were there, even got moved upstairs to another room one night, which was probably the only night I got decent sleep - though hadn't got back to hotel till after midnight myself anyway. First day I forgot to adjust the timezones and though I thought I had woken up with an hour for brekkie and to get ready and across to training, I quickly realised I had woken up right when I needed to be leaving hotel ... pulled on clothes and ran!

I had training till the 25th, but Andrew came over on the 23rd and took the metro in from the airport to near the training hotel where I met him - I had figured out this was the easiest way by this stage!

Had many great nights whilst training, from tapas to on the last day of training those of us left deciding to have a meal and catch some Flamenco dancing - managed to get a table at Cafe de Chinitas - "El Cafe de Chinitas is in the grounds of an 18th century mansion house and is one of the most famous tablaos (flamenco restaurants) in the world.". Before dinner Andrew & I moved into a hotel in the city (Hotel Francisco I) as we were staying on for a few extra days break and travel.

Spain is beautiful, loved the lifestyle. One of our favorite day trips was to Toledo. In Madrid we saw most of the local sights - Estadio Santiago Beranbeu [Real Madrid Ground], Plaza de toros Las Ventas [bull fighting stadium], Parque del Buen Retiro [gardens with big lake in, can hire boats on it - and yes we did!], Puerta del Sol, Palacio Real to name a few.

We flew back together to England on the 29th.

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