Karissa's European Adventure: Madrid-Heading into Spains Capital

Hey everyone,

We left our apartment in San Sebastian at about 6am to walk to the bus station and head to Madrid. Chloe is big on walking everywhere and made me walk from our hostel all the way to the station which was around 20minutes which doesn't seem that long but with a 20kg backpack on it seems like forever lol I am very glad she made me walk though to get some exercise and save $$ lol.

Our coach was quite nice and we had to sit in our allocated seats which thankfully were right next to each other and it didn't take long for us to fall asleep. We slept for a majority of the way until we got to our first stop. The coach driver spoke in Spanish which we couldn't understand but when people started to get off the bus we assumed it was break time. We didn't know how long we had so we just had to watch for people on our bus and when they got back on so did we. As we drove along and into Madrid I felt like we were in Mexico or something because the landscapes were so dry and barren. All I could see was dust and dirt for as far as I could see and it looked really hot outside.

After our six hour bus ride we arrived in Madrid and caught a cab with a guy I had met on Busabout who had stayed at Cat's Hostel before so we decided to go thirds in a cab with him. We showed the cab driver the screen grab of our address and after looking a little confused he got out his map book to see where the address was. We got in and he was speaking fluent Spanish to us which we couldn't understand but we assumed he was asking us which way to go. We couldn't communicate with him which was frustrating so we just sat in the cab and hoped for the best ha

Madrid:

Madrid is the capital of Spain and is known as a lively city which is full of energy. It has old streets to explore, museums to visit, parks to relax and legendary nightclubs to party in. Terrorist bombs rocked Madrid in 2004, just before National elections and killed 191 commuters on four trains. The cab driver said the words 'Bin Laden' as we drove past some huge train station on the way to our hostel and I assume that he was referring to the 2004 bombing which was a little sad.

We finally arrived, checked in and paid for our hostel which appeared to be quite nice. We were staying in a 10 bedroom dorm which had air conditioning which was a luxury when backpacking so we were impressed. The doona covers looks like ones my mum had around 10 years ago which were quite ugly but we had our own lockers so we didn't mind ha I ended up scoring a bottom bunk and Chloe was on the top bunk on the beds which were next to me. We met a really nice kiwi couple from Auckland in New Zealand who were easy to talk to and quite funny.

Chloe and I decided to go and check out some of Madrid and after not really knowing where we were going, ended up finding the centre of town where there were lots of restaurants and shops with loads of people walking around. We found a tapas restaurant which was close to us and had some yummy food, some glasses of wine (vino blanco/white wine) and some churros (Spanish doughnut/fried-dough pastry) with hot chocolate before heading back to our hostel for a siesta!All throughout Spain they have siestas which usually last from 2-5pm and involve all of the shops closing for locals to sleep and relax during the hottest parts of the day.

That night Chloe and I caught up on Facebook and we read our books before falling asleep in our new room in Madrid.