Madrid

Ok, I finally remembered what my password was to get to my blog. The fact that the entire site is in Spanish doesn´t help much either. Oh well.

My first day in Madrid I spent pretty much wandering the city and feeling a little overwhelmed at not being able to understand anything or anyone. However, the first place I happened to stumble upon was a tiny cafe/used bookstore that had books in English. jandjbooksandcoffee.com. After going god knows how many hours without sleeping, coffee was the first thing on my mind. Second, was finding a travel book on Madrid. I was in luck on both accounts and the girl at the counter even taught me how to ask for a map of Madrid in Spanish - tienos une planos.

Some notable things about the city that I discovered on my first day
1. All the stores and restuarants keep the most random hours. It´s hard to know when anything is going to be open. Some places shut down for siesta, which seems like it can be from anywhere between 3 and 6 p.m. Another dead time is 9 pm - too early for dinner and going out, but too late for stores to be open. My first night, myself and another girl from the hostel, Adriana, decided we were going to find a tapas bar. The guy at the hostel recommended El Tigre - buy a drink and eat taps for free. Sounded good to us, unfortunately it was closed. But we figured, hey we´re in Spain, it can´t be too hard to find a tapas restaurant. That´s where we were wrong. After walking around for what seemed like forever - either the places we found were closed (unclear if we were too late or too early) or they were only bars. So we settled for bocadillas instead - small sandwiches.

2. Aside from a few main roads, the streets are tiny. They are all one-way and so narrow that the bigger trucks barely fit, and when they have to turn, usually end up taking over the sidewalk as well. The sidewalks are also tiny, sometimes not even able to fit two people across. Also, everything is covered in grafitti. It´s weird, b/c we´re in a nice area of town with tons of boutique clothing shops, little cafes and bars, but the walls have all been spray painted.

More on Madrid later...