To Madrid Day 1

Today, after the dry run of yesterday, everything went smoothly. The trip to the airport was nice (though we found out that the taxi driver who overcharged us yesterday should've been reported as he was not driving an official taxi and he charged us 40 euros (the one who took us to the airport yesterday and today charged us 26 euros). Whaddya do? He had our luggage in his trunk.

The trip to Madrid was without incident. Bob and I had an empty seat between us and Aer Lingus which is usually very money hungry, did not charge us anything for overweight luggage.  However, when we arrived in Madrid, that was a different story. We went through the proper procedure to get a taxi to our hotel. The guy was in an official taxi (white with red stripe). He gave us a tourist book (we thought for free--here starts the language barrier problem). Not only does he charge us an extra 15. 50 euros for the cab ride (over the meter) we think for the tourist book (which isn't that good) but he points to a hotel sign when he drops us off, telling us that's our hotel. He quickly unloads our luggage and because he couldn't get a parking place in front of the hotel, leaves us at the curb to walk up four doors to what he said was our hotel. Well, guess what? Not only was that hotel padlocked, but the damn driver didn't drop us off on the right street (it was the middle of a block so we did not see the street sign which is usually on the corner on a building wall). Remember, now we have all our bags, an extra one of gifts for family members, AND we don't know where the hell we are! Bob sets off leaving me with the luggage in front of the padlocked hotel in the midst of hordes of people coming at me on a narrow sidewalk to find out the name of the street we're on and a cross street. Luckily, we had a Spain guide and although the Madrid maps were continued on 8 different pages (by Zone and we didn't know what the hell zone we were in so we had to look at all the maps and find the cross streets that Bob had found out we were on). I was so mad at that taxi driver. I hope there is such a thing as karma--that was mean-hearted, mean-spirited, and just plain MEAN! Thank God, we had remembered a plaza nearby so we could find the zone a bit easier. Then we found out that at least he left us in the right zone. We had to pull, push, cajole our luugage around COBBLESTONES (having four wheels on my suitcase didn't mean a damn thing on those cobblestones) and then, unfortunately, UP A HILL with uneven tiles--ugh! Well, we made it and we were pretty proud of ourselves for finding out where we were, how to get to where we had to go, and then getting there, bad knee, bad back, and overladen with luggage.

Our hotel is on one floor of a very tall building in a "happening" part of Madrid. Even though there are sex shops, tattoo parlors, and many attractive and unattractive hookers on our street, I think I might have found a bargain pair of boots for sale at the local Zapateria. Our room is spare but IMMACULATE and there is a guard outside all night and a desk clerk 24 hours a day. Although we have to pay for Internet access (3 euros a day), that's not too bad. After a nap, we explored the Gran Via, walked around the area of our hotel (from which, by the way, we have beautiful views of rooftops and part of the city of Madrid--we're on the 8th floor).

For dinner, we know they eat late here, but we couldn't wait that long (they eat dinner around 9 or 10PM), so we went to a little tapas bar recommended by the desk clerk. We just had delicious Iberico ham and coarse peasant bread for an appetizer. Bob had filet mignon with a Spanish blue cheese (cabrales) sauce and it was spectacular. with it came fried potatoes which were very delicious as well. I had a veal chop with the same potatoes, and for dessert we split (meaning I got most of it and Bob got to try it) a custard which was flavored with orange and cinnamon. It was delicious. We had Spanish wine with it as well and although it was a bit pricey (60 euros), we really enjoyed it and walked around a bit afterwards since it seems Madrid's citizens were  just beginning to party. Bed at 11:30 PM (I read about two hours after that).