Madrid

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My impressions of Madrid are clouded by the hustle and bustle of what seemed like just another big city and a few unhelpful non-English speaking Spaniards. Mind you this was our first stop out of our English comfort zone, and we were thrown in the deep-end with a tiny phrase-book!

I had my first back-packing adventure (on my first real day of back-packing of course!) looking for the elusive Bull´s Hostel coming off the plane.
Our simple directions: the Hostel was apparently right out of the metro, 'cant miss their sign', was contradicted when well there was no sign and the square we were in lead out to about 8 streets.
So, we marched down each looking for the bulls hostel and couldn´t find it. Dan, of course, refused to ask for directions until we had been walking around for about an hour.. I attempted a couple of Spanish phrases that provide useful (we established the fact that the hostel´s address did not seem to exist!)
I think we were walking around for 2 hours until I conviced Dan to call them and they said 'we go for you'.

Took them a while to find us but all was worth it, they were a lovely family with a very small hostel but overly crowded, they played music constantly at all hours in that place.

We spent two days walking around madrid, ate tapas and paella, found a glorious cafe with thick fat hot chocolate and churros. Did a full run through the Real palace which was amazing but strangely filled with Greek, Asian, basically anything other than Spainish interiors!

At the end of the 2nd day we had totally covered madrid and needed to get out.
Decided to go to Lisbon, except the only way to get there was by preferente class train meaning we got our own cabin, beds and quite a formal breaky in the restaurant carriage.

Madrid Highs:
- Siestas, bring these back to Sydney I say!
- Paella at 6pm when the entire cafe is filled with tables of all ages, having nothing but coffee and cigarettes. So much for trying to blend in.
- Ordering from a Spanish menu and being understood! Ah the small joys, yet major accomplishments of travelling..


Madrid Lows:
- All the usual lows of big city

xx hazeanddan xx

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Photos

chocolat
thick, gooey, perfect cups of hot choc

haze and the hot choc
seriously, the highlight of madrid...

haze and her paella
another main highlight of madrid... always the food!

two ladies
pretending to take a photo of dan, we had to capture the two ladies behind us who stared at us the whole time. do we smell already?