Madrid

Okay. Last night was a little bit miserable cause it was so bright and so loud and so uncomfortable in the airport, but I did get a little sleep between 3 and 4am. And I was pretty much only awake for take off and landing on the plane.

The city looked really cool from the plane. All around it is flat for miles and miles and miles an then in the distance you can see mountains. It was beautiful. The four tall buildings that are the financial district or whatever look out of place.

Julian met me at the airport and we came here to the hostel first. It´s pretty nice. Free use of the computers, a big kichen, big common room, lots of people, lots of rooms. I´m on a top bunk. I hate the top bunk. There are lockers in the rooms, but you have to have your own lock. Julian is going to bring me one tomorrow ´cause he has some. I´m in the Picasso room. They are all themed or just named after someone famous, but not necessarily Spanish. Bob Marley and Freddy Mercury are other ones. I´m not worried about my stuff here though. I guess that´s what counts.

First thing was food! Paella is great. I really like it with lots of lemon. The other dish was nothing special and nothing spanish--it was like these hambuger patties with bbq sauce and fries. Really weird. We walked around looking at all the Christmas markets, the Plaza Mayor, this really old but really cool and now trendy market. We´re going back there for sure because we want to try more of their foods. I tried Turron which is this almond nougat kind of thing. After that we didn´t know exactly what we wanted to do so we wandered down to the National Library. The National Library doesn´t have books for you to check out or touch or anything like that. It´s a museum mostly about paper and then they had an exhibit for Jose Rizal. Julian had been meaning to go see it cause Jose Rizal is this filipino national hero and it´s interesting because they were showing his life and how it affected his activism later. It was interesting. The whole thing was in spanish. I can totally read Spanish. That´s something. But speaking is iffy and listening comp is the worst. Especially with this vosotros thing going on and the accent. Ugh. It´s cool though.

We got tea at this Moroccan tea house. I thought it was good. I got white tea with vanilla and it was really sweet and you couldn´t really taste vanilla, but whatever. They had hooka in the front room right when you walk in too. We didn´t participate this time. Not feeling it. It´s been a kind of rough day for both of us--no sleep for me, and hungover for him. Still grand though.

We ate dinner at an Indian place. Curry and Nan! It was really good. Spanish dinner tomorrow though. I guess Toledo is a good place to get real Spanish food. We were talking about how Madrid is the capital and all that, but it´s definitely not the cultural or historic center of the country. That´s fine. It´s still beautful and it has all the museums. But I´m really excited for tomorrow. I have to make sure my camera is fully loaded.

There are Americans all over this hostel tonight. We´re everwhere.