South America (not quite anymore) Part 32 - From Business Bling to Homeless in One Short Hour - Madrid

Ant and I were feeling rather refreshed as we got off our "upgraded to business" flight with Iberia at Madrid airport.

Immigration was smooth (took a couple of minutes with the police guy not even bothering to check anything in my passport) and baggage claim was even smoother... our bags were first off the carousel (despite the lack of "Priority" tags). So much smoother than our last arrival in Madrid (after a 20hr plus journey from San Francisco via JFK minus bags).

Of note - there were a couple of sad looking sacks getting off the flight from Rio to the depths of Madrid winter and didn't look too happy wearing T-shirts and short skirts in near freezing temperatures. Luckily - Ant and I are "Smart Travellers" - we dressed appropriately.

The airport was nearly deserted as we arrived before 6am. The trip to town was super smooth - we did it via a $1 Euro metro ticket. All of the trains were fast, efficient and clean. Every time we swapped trains - we never had to wait.

So classy and bling bling all the way... that was until we reached our hostel.

After a quick glance at Ant's directions (he had to find out where the hostel was off the internet as we were "sin" Madrid Maps or Lonely Planet guides), we found the location of the hostel (aka Casa Chueca) and began to ring on the doorbell.... Nothing would happen. Ant was like "maybe cause it is 6:30am and we are too early - maybe the owners have been out all night and we should be polite...." - I was like - "we are paying money and it ain't too early" - so I kept pressing the button to buzz us in.

FYI - the hostel was sort of like the one in BA as it was in a block of apartments with other people living there.

After about thirty minutes of waiting out on the street and not getting any response... Ant decided that he might try and call the hostel on his mobile (despite the extortionate Virgin Mobile rates) - instead of the phone ringing - all Ant got was a message machine. After about an hour of standing outside... not knowing if there was anywhere else to go to (we didn't have any guides and didn't know where else we could stay... plus the hostel had our credit card)... someone on their way into the building was kind enough to let us in.

When we reached the second floor where the hostel was, we began knocking loudly on the door. Still no response. 5 minutes later - a guy walked down the stairs who said in English - "these guys are never at the hostel until 10am"... What what what?! Ant had given these "major league" a holes our arrival time - and stated that we need to drop the bags off (despite us not needing the room until later). What a freekin joke.

Feeling mega pi££ed - Ant walked around the block in an attempt to find somewhere else to stay - I stayed put like a homeless person - huddling to try to keep warm. Sitting in that stair well is like standing next to Lake Burley Griffin on a cold, windy winter's day.

At about 9:30am (we were into our third hour of waiting around) - there was movement in the station. The door of the hostel opened and a guest had heard us banging on the door. He let us come in (it was about 25 degrees warmer in the hostel - good thing) but we couldn't just leave our bags unattended at the hostel. We had to wait until after 10ish for the guy who worked their to turn up - he was very unapologetic (..."Sorry but I don't start work until after 10..."). If the hostel had told us not to come before 10 - we would have found a different place to stay. (Stayed tuned to Tripadvisor.com for a bad review).

To top things off - we didn't have a room ready for us... "there are people in your room who won't be leaving until 1pm"....

To calm our nerves... we found the local Pano store (Euro food franchise which makes better coffee than Starbucks) and had some Cafe de Leche (aka Flat Whites) and Te. After this we wandered around the area a bit - Ant still fuming about the hostel not letting us in and swearing that we would leave if "they ain't ready by 1:30pm".

Returning to the hostel - the guy gave us a different room key and said that the people in our room won't be leaving until the next day and they we had to change rooms the day after. This really pis$ed us off and Ant went into "red hair mode" and went berserk at the guy. (FYI - Later on the guy just let us stay in the same room for both nights).

I needed to flake out and did so for a couple of hours - while Ant, who was keen to check out Madrid and its shops (for more T-Shirts and clothes), explored the area for those couple of hours.

When I dragged out of bed at the Latino time of 4:30pm - we found a local turkish kebab shop. We both needed a fix of kebabs - euro style. They are dirt cheap (about $4AUD) and come with a thick pide pocket and are chock full of vegetables and chillies - definitely put those crappy "two tiny slices of tomato and a s### load of onion" Ali Baba kebabs in Australia to shame. Admittedly - Ali Baba don't exactly set a high standard which is hard to beat.

After lunch - Ant took me to the places he had explored whilst I was asleep (mainly shopping areas). We both have to admit that we not only planned to come to Madrid because of its culture but also because we had a good time shopping in Barcelona the year before.

We have both noticed that there wasn't much of a culture shock coming to Madrid from South America... A lot of places in South America feel a lot like Spain - just a little less developed and quite a bit cheaper. It was more of a "price shock" coming to Madrid (even after coming from Rio) - but the Euro tends to do that to places.

After chilling out at the hostel room for a while (including me doing a bit of blogging on the free internet with those damn finger pad mouse things which make me rewrite blogs five times!!) - we headed to a cheap local chinese restaurant for dinner. I think it must be an international Chinese Restaurant thing where you never get any of the meals brought out to your table at the same time. But at the Chinese restaurant we went to - we had to wait 25 minutes between getting both of our main courses. I got snoody with the waitress (who couldn't speak any Engrish) and started repeating "Pollo con Salsa y Curry ?Que?" (eg: Chicken Curry, what?). We only left a minimal tip (25 euro cents... heh heh!).