El Viaje

My travels are complete and my journey is beginning, I have arrived in Madrid! My flight was...long. I was sandwiched in between a girl who had no intentions of sleeping and a woman who had every intention of sleeping (on my headrest).  I fell asleep for about 20 minutes before she leaned on me and woke me up...she snoozed on. I was never able to fall back asleep so I watched movies for the rest of my flight. 8 hours of flight, 20 minutes of sleep...I was a zombie to say the least. I arrived at heathrow and the first thing I noticed is that while british people may drive on the wrong side of the road, they walk wherever they feel like it. Literally no flow of pedestrian traffic whatsoever. I had an hour or so left once I got through security...so obviously it was time to walk around the duty free shops and look at overpriced stuff that seems like a good value because there is no tax and you're in the airport. Heathrows international terminal is like vegas. If it weren't for flight times on the departures screen, you would have no idea what time it was. I was there at 8 AM and the bars were getting just as much, if not more business than Bagel Street. Either anti-semitism or alcoholism, not sure which. People were everywhere, half looking as if they had been up for days and half looking like they just rolled out of bed. None looking happy needless to say. I finally found out what gate my flight was leaving from (they don't tell you until about 30 minutes before, so you have to wait around with the muggles [yes, muggles]), and boarded my plane. Observation number 1: spanish women are far better looking than british women or most other women for that matter. Observation 2: whether or not I look like I would speak spanish I don't know, but the flight attendants have no interest in speaking english to me or anyone else even though they do speak it. Observation 3: no free in-flight service on Iberia, so they proceed up and down the aisle the entire flight trying to get you to buy stuff. Very shrewd salesman, convinced me into paying for a water, welcome to europe. But excitement is building, I am on my way to my home for the next 4 months. Again, no sleep. 14 hours travel time, about 21 elapsed with time changes...20 minutes of sleep. Whoops. I arrive in terminal 4 of the madrid airport. It is awesome. I go through their incredibly comprehensive customs system (one police officer stamping everyones passport, no bag checks), make the long trek to get my checked bag. Carousel spinning, no bag, nice start to the trip. I went to the customer service desk, used my rusty spanish and found out that they just sent it to the wrong carousel, crisis averted. Meet Markus outside and our first adventure begins, cab ride to our hotel. Our guy has no idea where he's going and I've come to realize that cab drivers in madrid in general don't know the directions around their city. We find it, finally, check in, and decide to go explore (have a welcome beer). That's pretty easy to do seeing as everywhere sells beer, including el corte ingles which is macys, ace hardware, kroger, best buy, and borders all combined into one. This is the first supermarket I've been to where I didn't question the super aspect of it. We had a free beer and tapa courtesy of the hotel here, and began our excursions. Aimless wandering led to el maestro churrerro, (the maestro churrero for those of you don't hablo the español).

Mahou and some good ol american Potato Chips

We were confused by the fact that it had about 7 menus, we would come to understand later that this is common, places buy generic menus, get their name put on them, and make all the same stuff. Beer down, continue wandering this time down Gran Via. Pass by "El Rincon de Andy" and wonder if that's a deliberate Weeds reference. More wandering, another beer...the 20 minutes of sleep is catching up to me so we make the journey back to take a little siesta before dinner. That happens, I wake up possibly more tired but we decide to get dinner at a cafeteria (not like lubys, that's what the restaurants with the multiple menus and patios are called in general). Albondígas y Paella de Carne. AKA meatballs with peas, potatoes, and gravy, and Chicken (maybe) and salty yellow rice. Good enough but not great, I'm gonna have to explore some more spanish food and find dishes I like. We head back in the direction of our hotel...there are verrrrry agressive hookers eeeevvvveeeerrryyywhere (quieres ir conmigo, si?) and people handing out flyers for the same "irish" pubs...so you just take one and then show it to everyone else and they leave you alone. We aren't really looking to get to wild so we just walk around for a while and head back to our hotel for the night, prepared to meet our señora en la mañana.

Observations:

Spanish women, still hot
PDA is all the rage if you're a teenager
This city really doesn't sleep, I think we were the first people to bed at 12:30
24 hour timing is pointless when you convert it back to 12 hour timing in your head
Tengo sueño may become a thought I just have to live with

Madrid so far is a beautiful city, like New York City but dryer, shorter, and cleaner.