A tale of two.. wait, three cities.

J Madrid, the true Spanish capital, where the Royal Palace will amaze, the monuments and fountains abound, and there are hundreds, nay, thousands still walking the streets into the wee hours of the night. Some bars don´t close until 6am, but keep in mind that many close around 2,3 pm and don´t reopen until 7 or 8pm. Being that we´re here in the fall we don´t really understand the dedication to the siesta, but we thoroughly enjoy the tradition, usually with a light nap or at least putting our feet up, walking from here to there all day really puts a strain on our tootsies.

M Go to WEM and find Europa Bullavard then look up. That is Madrid, only on a huge scale. The buildings are awesome. The weather has been about 15 to 18 degrees, for those who want to know. We enjoyed looking at the wonderful architecture, and joined one of those "hop on hop off" bus tours that you would think of in London. We got some culture at an Art Museum, the Prado.

Our worst experience (besides bed bugs!) to this point was the day before we left for the English Village, we spent most of the day looking for a place to stay when we got back. It´s off season, so we did not forsee a problem, but apparently November 1st (the day before we returned to Madrid) is a holiday in Spain, and there was also a "football" game on, so everywhere was full. We went to an internet cafe, with no luck, then went door to door hoping that we could find a place. We were making plans to leave our lugage at the airport in a locker and stay up all night at an all night club, when, thanks be to God, we found a place.

J Yes our start in Madrid was rocky, between the accomodation situation, and then going to the Prado and not getting the audio guide (3.50 euro each) and then finding out that the fee was only for earbuds, you see the first exibits we saw were in English as well so we figured why spend the dough, in the end we spent about 3 hours doing self interpretation of most of the paintings. It was still a lot of fun, Madrid has an energy that is hard to explain, and the Plaza´s and mazes of streets, we got lost often, but enjoyed wondering and exploring.

We decided before leaving for Barcelona that we would spend one night in Toledo. A small city only half an hour outside of Madrid. It was recommended to us by a few of our new Spanish friends. We´ll, what a long and tiring day that turned out to be.

M We got to the train station and got our tickets, no problem. Our ticket had a picture of a train on it with the number four underneath, so naturally we went to platform 4 and waited for our train to be ready to board. We noticed that after announcing the trains on the intercomm they would also announce in English, so we thought there would be no problems. We waited, and waited, and about 5 minutes after our train was to leave we reassured ourselves that Spanish trains were never on time. Half an hour after our train was to depart we realised we had missed it. Luckily after paying a service fee and waiting another hour we were on another train to Toledo.

We were just minutes from arriving in Toledo when we realised we hadn´t written our hostels information down. No problem we thought, we just need to find an internet cafe and look it up. After taking a bus into town, we asked at an information booth where we might find one, the nice lady replied that there was only one cafe in the whole city, and it was on the other side of town. Back onto the bus, we went off in search of this lone internet cafe. After much walking we finally found it, but it was closed. After a few arguements and a few more dozen blocks of carrying our packs we found one. Half an hour later we lugged ourselves into our hostel.

Oh did we mention that the streets in Toldeo are not flat? Either up, down, or both. Oh and cobblestone to boot.

J Despite our problems we enjoyed the hostel which was really a hotel, two single beds unfortunately but a private room and bathroom, the little comforts you take for granted at home. We walked the narrow and as Mich said, vertical streets of Toldeo. What a beautiful little city. We had a typical dinner at a small restaraunt, followed by drinks at a hip cafe, that had about a half dozen people in it (we ate at 7, and were at the club by 9, which is normal for home, but way early for Spain).

Thankfully our return to Madrid and subsequent flight to Barcelona went as smoothly as we could have hoped, and we found our hostel with minimal headache (compared to the Toledo fiascao anyway).

M Last night we slept here in Barcelona, and we were apperantly lucky that we had a place to sleep, as the streets were full, and I mean FULL of crazy Scottish Soccer (football) fans. It is out of control! There are also many police, even special ones we think are probably riot police standing around just in case. Why? Because tonight Glasgow plays Barcelona, the hostel guy says it is always like this when Scottland, or England comes to town.

J Barcelona is a much newer city, it feels a little like Madrid but doesn´t seem to have the same charm in my opinion. It still has plenty to see and shops and fountains galore. We spent the day at the Zoo and seeing a few meseums. I also have to confess that I´ve been to McDonalds two nights in a row, I fell in love with a Gelat i Cafe (coffee and ice cream) that they have here. Michelle is letting me indulge though as we´re doing a lot of walking these days, and they´re small.

M There is a big street that we walk down that is full of people, buskers, and pet shops. Yes pet shops. Lots of birds and rabbits are sold up and down the street. Well we are off to eat dinner. It is 8:15, so the resturaunts should be open now we hope. Eating here in Spain is usually lunch at 2pm and dinner at 9pm, so many resturuants don´t even open until 8pm. Good night all.