MADRID

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From Barcelona I caught an 8 hour over night bus to Madrid. The journey wasn't too bad as I managed to get some sleep and we arrived early in the morning at about 8am.

I hopped straight onto the metro with my bags and I was surprised that the train was empty despite it being morning peak hour, however after 2 minutes of having the carriage to myself a hurd of people boarded. The carriage was jam packed and I was squished against the door struggling to breathe - it was pure torture and I missed my stop as I couldn't get off the train in time. With no map and no idea where to go I knew I wasn't anywhere near my hostel. But after about an hour searching around I finally made it to my hostel, checked in and headed out to explore the city.

I ended up at Plaza Mayor, one of Spains most famous plazas. I saw a group offering a free tour so I joined them and for the next three hours we wandered around Madrid seeing all of the sights. The sky was bright blue and the sun was shining and my first impression of Madrid was great. We visited lots of sights and it was good to get an overview from a guide. After the tour we went to a tapas bar where we had lots of yummy tapas and ice cold sangria.

After the tour a few of us continued on and visited Parque del Retiro - Madrid's biggest and most popular park. It was an impressive place with a giant lake in the middle where you can hire rowing boats. It was nearing darkness so we continued on back to the city centre and ended up at another tapas bar where more drinking continued on into the night.

Madrid has been my favourite city in Europe and I could easily live here. I wish I had stayed longer but I am just about to head off to the airport to catch a plane to Bogota, Colombia.

Adios from Europe and my next blog post will be from sunny South America!



Jayden

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