1st Class to Madrid (Day 29)

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Got up at 8am which surprisingly is the earliest I have had to get up so far to catch a train or whatever. Got to the station to purchase my ticket and was dismayed to hear that if I wanted to get a 2nd class seat, which is what my Eurail pass allows, then I would have to wait for a train in the late evening. I didn't want to waste the day sitting around Sevilla again so I had to purchase a 1st class seat which costs more than I was hoping. That's the bad news for my budget.

The good news however is that I will not be staying in a hostel in Madrid. My Brazilian amigo Fabricio offered me the couch at his place as he is returning to Madrid from his business conference in Sevilla this evening. So I will just meet him at the train station where I left my pack earlier and from there we can go back to his place. So I got 2 or 3 free nights in Madrid which is nice plus someone who knows the area. Not a bad trade-off. Plus I have to say sitting in first class was pretty nice. Got a nice breakfast, free drinks, some newspapers and magazines to read. I am going to make sure to book my trains in advance now so I never have to do it again, but it was good experience, though an expensive one.

Spent most of my afternoon checking out some of the popular spots in Madrid and plan on leaving the museums for tomorrow. Stopped by the Plaza Mayor and Puerto de Sol first. I found my go-to lunch spot while I am in Madrid. The Museo del Jamon. They have a handful of these things around the city. All with racks of ham hanging from the ceiling as decorations throughout the joint. The best part is they have a 1 euro menu so I got a couple of bocadillos de jamon y una cerveza for 3 euro. For that price it is surprisingly tasty and pretty filling as well. Back to sight-seeing. I am surprised how much looks familiar from my first trip to Madrid over ten years ago. I'm pretty sure I even found the hotel we stayed at by accident. Took a picture so hopefully someone can verify this. Went over to the Palacio Real which I enjoyed more than I thought I did. I even managed to sneakily take a few nice pics of the inside even though it is verboten. The best part for me was easily the Real Armeria with all this armor and weapons that dates back to the early 1500s. They have these muskets with barrels about 9 feet long. I'll start hunting once I can use a beautifully engraved 9 foot gun. Anyways, just typing this now in an Internet Cafe on my way back towards the train station to meet Fabricio. My feet are killing me and I needed a break so this is a welcome stop. So far so good in Madrid even though its not as aesthetically pleasing as I remember. Kind of your basic capital. I guess that is what happens when you decide to build a capital out of virtually nothing in the middle of your country simply because you want a centralized location.

So I had planned on meeting my host for the next few nights at the Atocha train station when he arrived back in Madrid from Sevilla. I was sitting around the train station waiting when some older spanish gentleman made some joking comment to me about a passerby. This ended up leading to a half hour convo with the guy, all in Spanish. It took some time but it finnally happened. I have to say I felt pretty good about it. Once you get going and get some confidence it is a lot easier. Anyways, after waiting for a little while at Atocha I noticed something weird being said on the arrival boards so I decided to give him a call. It turns out he was stuck in Sevilla since there was a strike going on down there and no trains were running. Far from the first time this has happened here. It looked like I was going to be in a pretty bad spot but he called up his roommate who told me, via Fabricio, that it was fine to go over. Fortunately I had his address down so I took a quick cab over to their place and all is well. His roommate Leonardo (also from Brazil, have to love these names) let me in and we talked for a while before he had to retire to bed as he had work the next morning. So everything worked out fine thank god and all is well.

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