Dec 2006

Started the day at the Palace. I figured, i should probably see SOMETHING in madrid before i leave. I kinda feel a bit bad cause pretty much all i´ve been doing is just going out partying at night, and bumming around during the day. Haven´t seen any museums, or historical monuments or anything. I was kinda waiting to do it with Lisa, but i´m getting sick of madrid already and don´t know if i really want to hang around for 3 more days here.

The palace was pretty cool. Big, Old, but still very well maintained. Vastly different from all the palaces i´d seen in china which were also old, but in a tacky sort of way. Each room had a completley different theme, and there so much effort had gone into the decoration of each, it was amazing! There were frescos on almost every ceiling, some even had porcelain shapes in 3D that matched the wall paper. Lots of ornamental furniture, portraits and statues of kings/queens, tapestries that covered an entire wall, marble floors, that kinda thing. I took lots of photos, but there´s no flash allowed, and it was kinda dark inside, so well see how they turn out.

AFter the palace, i got a messages from lisa saying she was at the airport getting her luggage and would be there soon. So i went home to meet her. I figured she´d be there by the time i managed to get there, we´d have lunch, get her settled in at the hostel, and maybe see some sights in the arvo. Unfortunatley it took her 1.5 hours to get her luggage, and she didn´t arrive until 3pm. I was so glad to see her when she go there, both herself and her 25Kg´s of luggage (Already)! Why the hell she needs so much stuff is way beyond me! But apparently she bought alot of stuff in the US. From what i could gather she spent a few whole days just shopping in NY. Now i have shopping envy. All i´ve managed to buy are a pair of shoes for going out in. She´s also got me a little paranoid that i don´t have enough stuff. Once i take my down jacket out of my back pack it´s practically half empty, and i have to use all the clothes i have to cushion that bottle of wine i´ve got at the bottom of the bag. I guess i could always buy more stuff, now i´ve got Lisa the shopping guru with me, it can´t be THAT hard!

Maybe we´ll try to see the Prado today. We´re going to granada this arvo. Apparently there´s an alhambra there. Lisa says it´s really worth seeing. Damned if i know what it is though.

The spanish are pretty relaxed. Morgan told us that they don´t do much work. Their working day starts around 9-10ish, and then they have morning tea at 11, which goes for about an hour, lunch at 2, which goes for about 2 hours, and they finish work at 6. Pretty sweet working day! There´s also only 4 high-rise buildings in the whole of madrid. One of which is Deutche Bank. Looks like the Germans are running the country! It´s pretty wierd in the morning though. I went for a walk the other day at around 9am and there wasn´t a soul on the streets. I had to check my watch cause it felt like 5am in the morning rather than 9.

So the original plan for yesterday was to go to Toledo, another quaint little town just outside madrid, for the day and look around, take some photos, the usual touristy stuff. After the fiasco of getting to Avila yesterday, i figured it would be okay if i didn´t get going until a bit later, and maybe the relaxed spanish culture is getting through to me. So i went to the sunday morning flea markets to start the day. Truth be told, they were a bit of a let down. Think Paddy´s markets strewn across lots of little spanish streets, just with fewer chinese people. Yeah. The only decent stuff seemed to be jewellery, but even then there wasn´t anything that i hadn´t seen back at home before.

When i eventually got to the statin, there were no available seats on trains coming back to madrid from Toledo. Bummer! Okay, on the bright side, it´s only lunch time. I figured this would be a good chance to go see the rest of madrid instead. Maybe a museum or two? Went to the Palais Real ( i think thats how its spelt) only to find that the line went half way around the block, and it was closing in little over an hour. NO way i´m gonna line up and pay an entry fee just to see 5 mins of the inside. So that plan got shot down too. Instead i ended up walking around city´s shopping district, thought maybe i might find some good bargains. No such luck either. Probably cause i was so tired and not really concentrating on shopping. So in the end i just went back to my hostel (at 3pm) for a siesta.

Forgot to mention that i checked into Cat´s hostel on Saturday night. It´s where i originally wanted to stay, but they didn´t have any spare beds cause of the stupid public holiday. IT´s also about half the price of where i was before, AND includes breakfast! Met some nice people at the hostel once i woke up. They were just sittin´ around in the hostel and i thought i´d join them; Rainy, from Latvia who has been travelling for the last 4 years funding his trip by busking as a human stautue. Hank & Felix, two Dutch guys studying journalism and trying to learn Swedish. Jonathan, from Sweden trying to teach the dutchmen how to speak swedish. Reni, a thai Swedish girl (we asians really get everywere!). Danny, from Hondurus who dances like a crazy gay man, and Jane from Perth who´s been travelling on her own for a year now. We sat around, drinking vermouth, eating peanuts and sharing travel stories. Not that i had any. The dutch guys told me all about their country and kept trying to teach me dutch and convincing me to go there. Hey, i´d love to go, if i had the money or the time! Apparently it´s the birthplace of licorice.

I´d arranged to meet the girls for drinks at around 11, and i bought these guys with me. We ended up being a group of around 10 once again. It´s cool how easy it is to make friends when everyone´s so far away from home. Although i kinda feel like the grandma of the group with everyone still being in uni. Man.. i really wish i´d have been bothered to actually save while i was at uni and do this a few years ago. I feel so old and cynical compared to everyone else.

At the pub we met two Canadians (Geoff and... damn, i forgot the other one´s name, but he was cute) Both from Vancouver. They danced with us for a bit, but were on a pub crawl and had to leave to go to the next pub.

The pub scene is pretty cool! Last time i went out with Liz & Co we stayed out til 4am, and the clubs were still kickin´when we left. Apparently theres this area of madrid that totally goes off on saturday nights until around 6am. But i was so tired on saturday (after avila) that i just went to bed and slept. Another cool thing about the clubs is that although drinks are really expensive, if you´ve got a big enough group walking past the pub, they have people who try to get you go go in by offering you free drinks. If you walk in with one of these guys, everyone gets a free shot and they waive the cover charge. It makes it alot cheaper to just go to lots of different pubs instead of staying at the same one all the time.
So we went to another pub, and the canadians were there again. This pub crawl seemed like a good idea, so we decided to join up. Lucky for us the guys running it were pretty cool and we didnt´have to pay. Gary, the Irish man, and a spanish dude who was kind enough to keep offering me his jacket each time we went to a new pub, cause i didn´t bring mine and it was bloody freezing! I have to say though, that of all the accents i´ve heard so far, the irish one is probably my favourite.

THere were a few more aussies on the pub crawl. James and Evan from Adelaide, and Lyle from the Gong. There weren´t any americans in the group, and as a result there was quite a bit of american bashing. Mostly from the canadian guys, should i be suprised?

All in all, was a great group, and we ended up staying out till 4am. Went back to the spanish dancing club, and i felt less uncoordinated this time cause i was dancing with Lyle, your typical Aussie bloke who´s got absolutley no idea about salsa! I think we were more barn dancing than salsa dancing, but it was fun.

Lisa arrives today, Can´t wait to see a familiar face. Although this travelling alone thing isn´t as bad as i thought it was. I think i´ve about had enough of madrid though, ready to try somewhere new. Everyone i´ve spoken to says barcelona is pretty awesome. I´m looking forward to it!

So the public holiday on Friday was the day of the 'Immaculate Conception'. The Wednesday was constitution day. They have this cool thing in spain called a ´Bridge´, where if a public holiday falls a day short of a weekend, then the day in between is also classified as a public holiday, so this means the country´s been on holiday since wednesday. Nice!

The four Aussie girls from my hostel turned out to be physio students from Syd Uni, Mel, Liz, Holly & Jacqui. We went out in search of a salsa club at around 11pm. You wouldn´t think it, but it was suprisingly difficult. As far as i can tell, there´s only one in the ´clubbing´ area near where our hostel was. But once we found it, it was pretty cool! There was an instructor dude, but it took us a while to figure out who he was, it wasn´t like a ´class´or anything. He just went around giving people hints, and demonstrating what to do and what not to do. It just kinda looked like a normal dance club, but with everyone doing the same dance. After a few dances, i begun to realise just how crap at Salsa i really am. Sure, it looks cool, (and Mel was pretty fantastic at it) But my partners may as well have been dancing with a broomstick. I just had absolutley No idea what i was doing! And spanish drinks are crazy! I asked for a ´rum and coke´, and i got literally half a glass of run, and a puny little 300ml coke. It was so strong, it took me near half an hour to drink it. And it cost 7euros too! Luckily the next place we went to gave us free drinks just for going in.

Yesterday, the girls had planned to go to Avila, and since i didn´t have any real plans, i went with them. It sounded like a fun day trip. At this pòint i had no idea where Avila was, and what there was to do there, but i figured it was better than hanging out in Madrid all day on my own. The guy at our hostel had said to catch a train there from Atocha Train station, so we hopped on the Metro towards Atocha. On the Metro we heard two guys speaking english, and started chatting to them. They were American college students (Steve & Andrew) and had been living in Madrid for the last 3 months on a ´Semester abroad´program. And they were going to Avila too! We figured they knew more about travelling in Madrid then we did, so we decided to just follow them.

At Atocha, we lined up to get tickets for the train to Avila. Half an hour later when we got to the ticket window, we found out we´d been lining up for the wrong train line. There´s three train systems in Madrid. The Metro, which is the underground subway system in the City, the Renfe, which is the National railway system which connects main cities and this third system (of which name i do not rememer) this system has fewer stops and is mainly for transporting commuters to the city centre. All in all, it kicks cityrail´s arse! We needed the Renfe, but had been lining up at the other train ticket booth. So then we went to the Renfe part of the station. And it was pretty cool! There was this huge indoor garden/green house thing filled with huge ferns and all sorts of other plans. We lined up at the Renfe ticket booth and the line was stupidly long, but it let us chat and get to know each other. Steve & Andrew´s three other friends arrived, Dana, Morgan and Mary-Catherine. All 5 of them are in the ´semester abroad´' program at NYU, although most of them are actually from different parts of the states. IF i remember correctly, Dana is from washington state, Morgan is from Virginia, and Steve is from New Jersey. The Americans learned that Australia has Summer now, one of them asked if we had xmas in july? No, we have xmas at xmas time, its just summer! *Rolls eyes at stupid american comment*

Half an hour later, we get 10 return tickets to Avila. I kinda felt like we were this huge tourist group! We had an hour to kill before our train arrived, so we sat in the garden to wait for our train. What i had previously thought was just grass turned out to be a pond filled with water lilies. And little turtles!! They were so cute, trying to climb up onto the rocks to sunbake. Me & Holly sat there 'oooh'ing and 'aaah'ing at them for a good 40mins. Then someone actually read their ticket and realised we were at the wrong station. The train for Avila left from Chamartin, not Atocha, and we weren´t going to get there in time (Chamartin´s on the other side of the city). The next train wasn´t until 1:30. Doh!! Someone decided it would be better to catch a bus instead which left at 1pm, and we all went to return our tickets. Only half of us got them returned, so half of us went to CHamartin to catch the next train, and the other half went somewhere else to catch a bus (i was one of the bus people). We got to the bus stop, and realised Morgan had read the bus time table wrong and there wasn´t a bus until 2... So then, we went to Chamartin to catch the train with the others instead. So after much to-ing and fro-ing, and running around almost all of madrid, we finally got on the train to Avila at 1:30. I figure if we hadn´t listened to the americans we´d be there by now! But it was fun meeting new people, and it wasn´t like i´d had other plans.

The train ride was very ´nice´. A word that the Americans seemed to use to describe everything! Especially steve, he seemed to say it almost every second sentence. There was pretty scenery, and even a castle on the way! Everything looked so green to me & Liz, although steve and Morgan said that this part of Spain was actually quite dry.
We taught them a few aussie phrases like ´Whinger´, ´Wanker´, ´Rock up´ and ´Maccas´, in turn they taught us that the word ´nice´can be used for absolutley everything!

Avila was really pretty. There´s this old city surrounded by a city wall that´s supposed to be one of the best preserved in the world. Consulting my Lonley Planet, it says that its been around since the 11th, 12th century. There was also a cathedral built into the wall, but by the time we went in there, it was too dark to really take any decent photos. The building felt really cold, ominous and opressive. The ceiling was really tall, and it seemed to be all built of grey stone, with some intricate carvings round the whole wall and ceiling. Perhaps it was because it was so dark, but the place was just so big and gloomy! Even the colourful stained glass windows looked depressing. It seemed to be built to make people scared of their god. I´d hate to go there on a sunday morning!

There was also a comic book festival on in Avila, and as a result there were all of these big plastic statues of comic book characters scattered around the old town. It´s a really wierd sight to see a tacky polystyrene spider man climbing a 11th century city wall!

On the way back to the station from the Wall it started to snow. Jacqui and Holly were really excited and they started taking photos of the snow. Unfortunatley it wasn´t really that cold, and it all just melted to water once it hit the ground, but it was still cool!

The train home was really full. Even though the tickets are meant to be reserved seats, alot of people got on who obviously had no seats and just sat wherever they wanted. One of them was in Liz´s seat, and when she told him it was her seat, he said to her ´there are too many people on the train, and some people have to stand, and there are old people standing´, implying that she should give up her seat to him cause he was old. She didn´t. Go girl! Stupid old man, if he wanted a seat he should´ve bought one! (It´s a hour and a half train ride!) Jacqui wasn´t so lucky, and the guy in her seat wouldn´t move for her so she ended up standing up most of the way. I was so tired, i just slept the whole way.

I have no idea what time it is, i think probably around midnight friday night sydney time, but here it´s about 1pm. It´s all so wierd. I haven´t been hungry yet either, although both tiredness and hunger could possibly kick in later, when i really don´t want it to.

Madrid is beautiful! AT least what i´ve seen so far, which isn´t very much. Apparently there´s some sort of public holiday on at the moment, hence why i wasn´t able to book any accomodation before i arrived. it all makes sense now. I almost went to salamanca! I did eventually however, find a nice little hostel Madrid near Sol. I was kinda scared of being here on my own, but luckily there are 4 girls from Sydney staying in the rooms next door to me, and we´ve agreed to go out dancing together tonight. I´ve just gotta find some cute dancing shoes. Hopefully something´s open.

And i really wish i´d listened more when weiner tried to teach me spanish! I know nothing except ´si´and ´muchos´. We´ll see how i go.

So i'm at hong kong airport, taking advantage of the free internet that they have available. Yay for free internet! At least i made it out of the country. I was starting to feel it was impossible to leave the office. The inflight entertainment on Cathay Pacific was pretty average. No video on demand meant the same videos kept being played over and over again. I think i watched the same scene from 'Dead Mans Chest' about 4 times. And the food was just awful. Thankfully i'm still not completley recovered from my tummy bug, and just not feeling hungry in general, so the lack of decent food hasn't been a problem yet. Fingers crossed i get better once i arrive in spain and want to eat a proper meal.

The lady who sat next to me on the plane was from hong kong. Going home after a short visit to Aus. We had a good chat and got along well. I've added her to my email list for photos & trip details. Here's to making lots more new friends on this trip.

The only things i'm still anxious about is wether my new hiking boots actually fit properly, and wether i'll survive my first 2 days in spain on my own. I guess time will tell with the shoes. And as for spain, if worst comes to worst i'll just sleep in the hostel until lisa gets there, god knows i'll have jetlag. Something i've never experienced, and am not looking forward to