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Published: October 26th 2007
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¿Cómo estais?
Everything went fine here, except yesterday morning (headache).
I arrived last Tuesday with Ryan Air, one of the European low cost airlines. I arrived at Madrid Barajas Int'l Airport. The airport is quite large, but not so nice from the outside. It was my first time with Ryan Air...I've never got so little legroom in an aircraft! Once inside the terminal I took the metro to the city center. Madrid has an excellent metrosystem, very very good and better that I expected. With the metro you could reach almost every part of the city, there are dozens of stations. I arrived at my hostel and it was in the afternoon. Then I decided to take a map and go for a walk in the area around the hostel, just to get to know the area. In the evening the hostel had a "Sangria party", which they do every week to welcome new guests. Although it is low season, the hostel was pretty full of tourists from South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Italy, Sweden among others. I went to bed pretty late this day and the next day I couldn't wake up very early. I left the
hostel around noon to go see Madrid.
The city itself is very nice and less busy than what I thought. It has many squares and fountains, Plaza de Cíbeles and Plaza de Cánovas de Castillo I found to be the most beautiful ones. Of course there are plenty of museums but I dind't visit any of them....because most of them just have paintings etc. (which gets boring after 30 min. walking in there) and because the next day I woke up with a bit headache and I left the hostel after noon...which meant that I had no time to visit any museum. I went to the area around the Royal Palace which was quite impressive. Of course many tourists around, trying to get inside. Since I'm not much of a Royal Families fan I didn't worry to go inside. If the queue would have been short probably I would have gone inside for a while. The Plaza Mayor was also very nice, reminded me a little bit of Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy....bit it was less expensive than Venice of course. Many people gather on this plaza, just sit down and chill for a while, or take a
drink or get some food.
The Retiro Park was worth visiting, it was like a little Central Park like in New York. It is very large and when inside you won't feel like you're in the middle of a city (in Central Park you do because everywhere you'll see the skyscrapers). Another place where many people gather and hang out is the Puerta del Sol. This area has many pubs and clubs and there are people around almost the whole day. Gran Vía is one of the main roads in Madrid with lots of traffic, lots of businnesses and at night many neon lights will decorate this broad avenue. The Al Qaeda bombings of March 11, 2004 took place at the Atocha station, Madrid's central station. I went to the station and saw the site that was built for the 191 people killed during these cruel actions. Puente del Toledo, in the southern part of the city, crosses above the Manzanares river which looked as if it is heavily contaminated. The area didn't look nice at all, at certain places it really looked like a third world country.
Yesterday I went to the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, home of
Real Madrid. By coincidende I was walking in the area and I saw the stadium and decided to take a tour. Although I'm not a football fan at all (I'm a baseball fan) I always like to visit such places. Real Madrid even had a game the day before and of course I didn't know about it. Inside I met Thiago from Rio, Brazil, who is studying in London and was travelling alone as well. We made the tour in the stadium together and then went to eat. We planned to meet each other later in the evening again, he was planned to go out with some Russian girls who are giving a ballet show in Madrid these days. But that plan didn't continue and I went out with Andrea and some of her friends (Andrea is one of the hostel employees). In th club we met David who is a Venezuelan from Valencia and just arrived in Madrid this week with a family member, trying to get to work and get some money here in Spain, since "Chávez está jodiendo el país", he said! The club is situated near Puerta del sol and it was great, good music and
nice people. Everyday they have like a special theme. At the entrance, everyone gets a number that you have to wear on your body. For example, if you have number 721 and see a nice girl with number 482, you can ask the hostess to write a note and about every 30 minutes the hostess will read some notes: "To nr. 482 from nr. 721; You're the hottest in here tonight". I didn't sent nor got any notes 😊.
That's all for Madrid. Later today I'll be flying with Easy Jet to Milano Malpensa, from where I'll take the train to Torino Porta Nuova station. There I'll meet Stefano and Fabio. After Torino I might go and meet Luca and Lucia just for 1 day and then go to Milano. "Non vedo l'ora di andare"!
Take care all and have a very nice weekend!!!
¡Saludos!
Elton
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Byron
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Spaanse Elton!!^^