day 15 malaga - madrid

4 june 2009
rich and i took off for madrid today whereas nusbaum went to la ligne to check out gibraltar, before heading to seville.


for some reason, departure gates keep changing and they like to see what happens if they don't really announce it.

arriving in madrid we had to navigate the metro system, but the metro directions to hostel, plus the system itself were surprisingly clear. once we reached anton martin station though was a different question all together. took us a while to find the hostel itself, but then was welcomed by activities coordinator, pablo. apparantly this position is not common, so "drinking games" and "pub crawls" are not the norm. after orienting ourselves in room 209 (i was bunk 9), we checked out a bunch of stuff recommended by pablo, such as the "heart" of the city, plaza ponteres (which was all under construction, so kinda sucked), then to plaza mayor (where we returned to for dinner to have beer and bocata de calamares for 4e at los galayos), then went to the palacio real which was pretty cool, but lacking compared to versailles. then we strolled the entire length of gran via, down to museo postal y de telecommunicaciones (which was just a big post office), then down paseo del prado til we hit huertas again. i will give it more time, but so far nothing crazy great to say about the capital of spain.


drinking games began back at the hostel with the free (cheap) sangria, and i got screwed with chugging 4 glasses with the 4th king. HUGE canadian contingent from ontario, and manitoba and chris martin look-alike and fiery witty peterborough opponent, complete with remarks on age, hair and race :)


used cached map and gps to find my back back to hostel.


other:
-"we're the only ones from real cities!"
- "man bangs"
-"i have swine flu" re: no more sangria for rich and no desire to kiss dude to his left
- i am 10 years older than a lot of the other hostel guests
- "what's your name?"
  "victor"
  "victor, you got f$&ked..."