D113 -- Touchdown in Madrid

We arrived into London around 7 a.m. and then caught a 10 a.m. flight to Madrid. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Madrid we ended up waiting two hours for our luggage, and one of our pieces never showed up. It's a 4 foot long bamboo pole for a fabric wall hanging we bought in Vietnam. We figured it was just a matter of time before we lost it. We had already left it behind at one hotel, only remembering it as we were getting on a bus.

We caught a taxi to our hotel, which is located in the heart of Madrid. We were a little anxious because we didn't really know anything about it and we had chosen it simply because we got a great rate using one of those last minute booking web sites. But it turned out to be a really nice four star hotel that is right next to one of the better nightspots in Madrid. There was even stained glass in the lobby! We each took really long showers as this was the cleanest bathroom we have had in four weeks. We were starving at that point, but it was only 5 p.m., and restaurants in Spain don't open until late. We decided to grab some tapas at one of the restaurants in the plaza next to our hotel to tide us over until dinner.


I am ashamed to admit that Elva and I are not very adventurous when it comes to food. We don't experiment as much as we should. So although the tapas menu was filled with all kinds of things we had never tried before, we decided to go with the old reliables – tomato and cheese salad with olive oil and some bruschetta. Maybe we will be more adventurous next time, although I doubt it since we have already found 2 Mexican restaurants we want to try :)

We walked around the neighborhood for a while and then headed back to the hotel. We had hoped to take a nap and then head back out to taste some of the famous Madrid night life, but we decided that we were just way too jet lagged to go back out again. So instead we watched some TV to force ourselves to stay up a little more, and then we were off to sleep.

-Tom