Mirentxu Madrid

... reminiscent of Arizona, or so Conrad says (I've never been). It was very brown everywhere and the mountains were bare. I, of course, slept on and off. It has become impossible for me to be in a car for a long distance ride and not sleep for most of it. Unless of course, I'm driving!
We made it to Madrid and just had to find the hotel. That was easier said then done. Conrad stopped to ask a taxi driver for directions. His directions led ...

... better have been important!  When we got off the bus we saw that he had one of those bluetooth wireless headsets sewn into his ear, dork.  

The bus took only 6.5 hours and we arrived in Madrid at 5:08am.  We then had to kill even more time waiting for it to be a decent hour so we could search for a hostel.  We sat in the bus station for a while before a security guard asked us to move on so we hopped on the train.  Somewhere ...

... We discover this when Doug checks his email and the hotel in Southern Phuket sends us a message saying that the pickup driver can't find us....oh ****. He is there a whole day early to pick us up, which means that our connecting flight from Bangkok to Phuket is already gone, and we are still in Madrid! We promptly grab the Thai Air attendant at the counter who tells us---yes this is wrong-USAir is wrong. Just for the record, Doug had called USAir ...

... we headed to the gate. Thanks to my temporary injury and with Andrea as my carer, we were able to aboard with premium paid speedy boarding people as passengers requiring special assistance! Such a deed enabled us to get seats for the 6 of us altogether. We landed in Madrid and encountered mild temperature and discovered that it was another incredibly long walk to baggage claim and passport control. Cue more cursing at being unable to walk properly! We'd booked a minibus to take us ...

... to the bullfighting. The bullfighting was different, it was hard for the girls to watch and I don't think it is something I would go and see again in a hurry. So after it was finished we all went for a few drinks back at a hostel that some of the guys were staying at and the girls decided they wanted to check out this 7 floor nightclub, we went and got changed and met up with a couple from brissy, Dave and Trish, that are living in London and a newlywed couple from Perth ...

... and probably really interesting; the professor seems nice and pretty lenient. It´s been pretty nasty out the past few days, pretty cold and a lot of fog and drizzling. I hope it gets nice soon so I can take some good pictures of the campus and send them to everyone back home. I'm also planning on posting pics with all my entries as soon as my internet is up and running and I don't have to borrow Tara's every five minutes!

This morning we have some free time before our arranged lunch. Patricia and I decide to do some walking and I have a plan to see some monuments on the northeast side of town. I am fairly decent at reading a map, and I manage to get us out of the really touristy area and into more of the business area of Madrid. We are approached by some Gypsies on the street and they try to give us carnations for a penny. Patricia is a native ...

... am hitting 10.000 visitors (surely the best month since I started this blog). I have also noticed an increase in personal e-mails that are being sent to me from people around the world who have stumbled over my blog and who have questions about Latin America. I guess most of it boils down the popularity of blogs these days, and also the number of people out there with an interest in travel and who want to take a deserved break from the rat race...

... and had a lot of great naps. We did go to the Museo de la Reina Sofia (the modern art museum) at my insistence, and I really enjoyed the things we saw there. However, we were generally feeling a little museum-ed and cathedral-ed out, so we opted not to go to the Prado and swarm around in front of Las Meninas like everyone else :) Generally, Madrid was big and loud, although it probably has a lot of character if you get to know it. Overall, Chris and I ...

... both my backpacks, no hostel bed, and 7 hours until the ticket office opened. I took the subway back to Cat's Hostel, stored my bag, and contemplated drowning my sorrows. Then remembering that I had to be semi-lucid at 6am, I decided on caffeine as the substance of choice. I followed a couple of herds of kids out to some local bars and clubs, including two 17 year old St. Louis girls who were very ...