Driddy Drid

MADRID (or Driddy):
Day 1
I went with a group of 13 to Madrid early on Thursday morning.  It is a five-hour train ride, most of which I tried to sleep.  Once we arrived in Madrid we went straight to a hostel called Cat’s Hostel.  The group I had tagged along with had already rented a ten-person room, so Alicia, Caroline and I got placed in a room together with other travelers.  Quite an experience sleeping on rickety bunk beds with a bedskirt as a blanket in a room full of strangers all of which were hairy, stinky, snoring men.   Oh hostels.

Once we had all secured our rooms, we went off to explore and eat in Madrid.  I am pretty sure we chose the most expensive places to eat (stupid) but the food was good. Probably walked for another 6 hours that day and then had another very late dinner. Thankfully, Greg, one of the guys in the group, knew Spanish pretty well so he was our leader and designated question-asker.  I dubbed him Jefe (Chief) and it seems to be sticking. At lunch, the group had been advised to go to a club called Joy that night because, “It’s jueves, everyone in Madrid goes there on jueves!”  Instead we decided to do a pub-crawl that Cat’s offered us.  Definite highlight of the trip. We were taken to 3 hole-in-wall bars and given free Sangria at one and tequila shots at the others.

At every bar, except the last one, the dance floor was empty until us Americans came in and took over.  It was literally our group dancing with a Spanish audience circling around.  I think we were pretty entertaining too.  Every time an American song came on (which was quite frequently since the clubs play a lot of American music) the group of us got really excited and sang it at the top our lungs.  I busted out my Zumba moves and some interpretive dancing which, as always, was a hit.   There was also lots of cheersing to ‘umbuntu,’ which is our voyage theme and it means something like “People are people through people.”  Umbuntu **clink**

We finished our ‘pub-crawl’ing at about 4:30 am and went to get the best churros con chocolate in the city.  I thought that we would be the only ones with this craving at 4 in the morning but alas there was line out the door.  Still, it was worth it.  These churros were ten times better than the ones I ate in Cadiz.  I wish I was eating them right now, in fact.  Finally, at 5 (a 23-hour day for me) we returned to the hostel. 

The room was pitch-black, so we fumbled through our things making a bit of a ruckus and our hairy, stinky roomies let us know they were upset by clearing their throats.  Okay, I get you’re awake and that I woke you, but I’m in Spain!  Payback was the next morning when they turned on the light at about 8 when I was still trying to sleep.  Live and learn.

Day 2
With a solid five hours of sleep under my belt, the gang and I decided to go on the free walking tour provided by the hostel.  Alicia, Caroline and I checked out of the hostel before the tour because we planned to head back to Cadiz that afternoon (foreshadowing).   This meant we carried our backpacks the entire tour. 

I am really happy we did the tour because we saw a lot of the sights Madrid has to offer and the tour guide, Adrian, is now our BFF, (when the tour was over he instructed us all to contact him on Facebook and also invited us to his birthday dinner that night).  Adrian knew his Madrid trivia and spoke very good English.  He discussed the incestuous royalty that used to inhabit Madrid.  He showed us the oldest restaurant in the world (it’s in Guiness, look it up); a church that took hundreds of years to finish because the Spanish are lazy drunkards (his words, not mine); a convent with nuns called Las Caramelitas, who never see anyone but they make the best almond biscuits ever (I know from experience).  He pointed out Museo Nacional Del Prado, an art museum that we went to later on.
We all loved Adrian and tipped him generously at the end of our tour. 

Everyone was tired and hungry after another long day of walking, but Alicia, Caroline and I needed to go to the train station so we broke off from the group.  We arrived at the Attocha Train Station, which is huge, about an hour and a half ahead of time and got in line to purchase our tickets.  Coach seats were sold out so Alicia and I bought first-class seats and when Caroline got up to buy hers the lady informed her there were no seats left at all.  Well the group that hostels together, stays together so we returned our tickets and bought tickets for the earliest train the next day.  Then we just sat in the train station because we were tired and cranky and had no place to go…..to be continued.