Day 1 - Madrid

The best Paella I had on the whole trip

Blaze and I at Plaza Mayor

A large pedestrian street near Plaza Mayor

2 men resting near some statues

A statue in front of the Royal Palace

This was taken from the taxi cab window

So we landed this morning in Madrid after a 9 hour flight at around 9:30am. Went through, customs, got our bags, and jumped in a taxi.

All I can say is wow. Just wow. Madrid is such an amazingly beautiful city. On our taxi ride to the hostel, we passed through alot of major areas of the city, including the soccer stadium where Real Madrid plays. The architecture here is a mix of post-modern with some gothic influence on alot of the older historic buildings. The thing that makes the city the most beautiful to me however are the people. Alot of the women kind of dress the way a "hippie" would dress in the U.S. Everyone looks very comfortable. Luckily I am able to get around pretty well with my Spanish. Its amazing how fast it comes back, its like an area of my brain that was just laying dormant but woke up pretty quickly once I started hearing all the talking and seeing all the Spanish signs.

Our taxi dropped us off right outside the street where our hostel was, and damned if it wasn't hard to find. Blaze and I walked up and down the street and I must have asked 5 people "sabe donde esta la Residencia Alvaro?" before Blaze ended up using some international minutes to call the place and ask for directions. The hostel is in an older building on the 3rd floor. The floors are creaky wood, walls are faded, and there is construction going on outside during the day but its not that bad. We paid 120 euros for 3 nights for both of us. The hostess is an attractive young girl who speaks pretty good English.

After we got settled we just started wandering around the city. Our hostel is right smack in the middle of things, which is awesome. Today we saw Plaza Mayor http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_mayor, La catedral de Almudena http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Almudena_Vista_del_norte1.jpg, and La Pallazia Royal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jardines_de_Sabatini_(Madrid)_06.jpg . All of these things were friggen amazing. The parks and statues throughout the city are incredibly well kept and beautiful as well. I was very impressed with the general friendliness and laid back nature of all the locals. Its not what I expected with a huge capital city but it is very welcome. We stopped to eat at a cafe near La Pallazia and something funny happened. There was a girl at the counter struggling to order a cappucino to go. She was making wild hand motions and saying "TO GO, to leave with!". I stepped in and told the girl behind the counter "para llevar". The one ordering turned around and was pretty happy to be bailed out while the girl behind the counter just looked annoyed, haha. We ended up eating lunch with the American girl and her friend. They were both nurses from Boston. We talked for about an hour and they told us how they had already visited some of the cities we plan on going to next. They just stayed in the hostel that we will be staying in Valencia. I asked if they wanted to hang out later tonight but they said they were taking a night train to Barcelona, oh well.

Well we just woke up from a 3 hour nap, its about 8 oclock local time. Time to get ready for tonight! I forgot to bring my camera's USB cable but I should be able to come across one soon and will hopefully have some pictures uploaded.

Ciao!