Monday, September 19, 2005

Madrid, Spain - DAY ONE - stopover on the way to Lagos

Madrid.... we stopped here for one night on the way to Lagos, Portugal. Figured we would have one night now and spend more time her after we go through Portugal when we'll have more time....

Got to Madrid at around 6:00pm... headed to the hostel with everyone and dropped our stuff off. It was a very interesting walk. There are young prostitutes EVERYWHERE on the street and apparently they are there 24 hours a day. We were warned, well, the men were warned on the bus as we arrived, that the prostitutes get pushy and grabby but that still did not prepare us for it. Crazy. Some of these girls looked under 16.... nuts. Not pretty. Quite sad.
Pretty nice room, only three of us in it which was great cause when we made the reservation on-line it was for a 20 bed room so it was a nice surprise. Once we dropped our stuff we headed out to the pharmacy because.... Lucky me I've got BRONCHITIS.... major bummer... especially cause I'm always sharing a room with strangers which means I'm keeping all of us up at night. No fun. Anyway, hit the pharmacy for some cough losenges (I got some decongestant last week.... I'm now a walking pharmacy and none of the drugs are working....) and we headed back to the hostel for Happy Hour - 2 sangrias or 2 beers or 2 glasses of wine for €1.50. Can't beat that price anywhere. So... we met up with Miles and Jo for some pre-dinner drinks. We all sat in the bar by the window and watched the prostitutes and john's do their thing.... kind of like reality t.v. During happy hour the 4 of us befriended an older Australian couple and a couple of Australian girls we've seen alot of during the trip. After Happy Hour we all headed to a restaurant the guide had told us about. Apparently they served salad, steak and dessert for €9.00. Pretty damn good. We got to the restaurant, sat down and looked at the menu... "Um.... where's this €9.00 deal?" we all whispered to eachother.... None of us had any idea so one of us asked the guide (Who was also dining at the restaurant, just not with us) and we were told that it's only if we ate in the front of the restaurant with the rest of the poor people. We didn't realize that so we sat in the back fancy room. Well, we couldn't all just get up and leave and we were all dying for this steak we had heard so much about so we all sucked it up, spent a fortune and stayed. Damn good steak.
After dinner we all headed back to the hostel to have a few more drinks before bed. We all had to get the bus at 8:00am so we decided it was better to stay in than go out. We resumed watching the reality show outside, had some laughs and some drinks and then headed to bed at about 1:00am.

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