Hello from Madrid!! I am sitting in the computer room of my hostel, and it is 10:04 here. My flight landed at 7:30, and it took me this long to get everything together and get here. But here I am!
International flights are actually rather nice. Everyone gets their own little tv with free movies and tv shows, they serve dinner and breakfast, and they give you free wine and beer. So while I was watching Tangled (thumbs up), I enjoyed a merlot, a salad with cesear dressing, a roll with butter, a piece of cheese, and chicken with veggies and risotto. Oh, and a brownie with an Oreo baked into it, which was kind of fun. After Tangled I watched How Do You Know, which is just okay. But perfectly entertaining if you really don't have much else to do because you're strapped to a chair at 30,000 feet. Next up was It's Kind of a Funny Story, about a kid that checks himself into a mental institution. Fairly skippable. And then Somewhere, which I really wanted to see because the previews looked good and it has Elle Fanning in it. Watch the previews and skip the movie. Literally nothing happens in this movie. At all. Every scene is a two to four minute long clip of someone doing nothing. Like cooking. Or lounging by the pool. Or driving. If all the dialogue was strung together it would last all of five minutes. I kept waiting for the movie to get started. I didn't believe it could really be that awful for 97 minutes, but it managed.
So, with this final marathon movie session before my tv hiatus, I didn't get much (any) sleep. I tried before Somewhere. But it's impossible. I'm too tall to sleep on the tray table like the kid next to me. And everything else is just horrible. So, it's 4:14 am Florida time, and I've been up since 7. Check-in's at 3, aka 9 Florida time. So, I'll have been up for 26 hours before I even get the chance to sleep. Luckily, when it's daytime outside your brain gets tricked into thinking it should be awake. :)
Customs was a breeze in Madrid. I only needed one stamp, and the guy barely glanced at me! Which is good, because 3 years ago I had not one but two customs agents not believe that I was the girl in the picture, and I've only changed more since then. But in Asia it was always one stamp exiting the US and another stamp entering the new country. So the one stamp thing surprised me. Then, I grabbed my bag from baggage claim and spent quite a while getting all the straps out and attaching the little bag to the big bag. I found an ATM and got some Euros, and then walked about 4 miles to the terminal in the airport that's attached to the metro. Past all the backpackers who slept in the airport overnight waiting for their morning flight - or whatever their story was, but I passed several of them. The metro was also uneventful. And then I exited the metro. And needed to find the street my hotel was on. And really, really wished I had a map. I ended up asking 3 different people for directions, going up and down streets, turning around in circles. Finally, the third person I asked (a street cleaner) pulled out a map! Hurray! A minute later I had my bearings. Back the way I'd came, make a right, then the third left, and voila!
Of course, I can't check in until 3, but they stowed my bag for me, and there's a tour I'm going to take at 11:30 where I'll see all the "must-sees of Madrid". It will take 3 hours. And then I will probably fall asleep. :)
Oh, and I have a funny story. So there are a couple of girls who were also stowing their bags the same time I was. I paid with my Capital One card, and the receptionist gushed about how cool it is that it has my picture on it - the one taken in Philly with me in the Monopoly wheelbarrow. While we were stowing our luggage, the American girls asked if I was from Philly, and I told them I was from Madison. Wouldn't you know they're all students at UW, and one of them works at the brand new Hilton, where our former company frequently books rooms for potential employees. They are literally the first people I've spoken to (in English at least) since I left my parents yesterday. Small world.
So, until next time!
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