Barcelona via Madrid

While we were in Barcelona, an old classmate of ours emailed, inviting us to visit her in Madrid. So we thought, why not? The chance to see someone from home and speak Australian English at a normal pace, e.g. super fast (we both speak really slow now so that people can understand us).

We caught our train to Madrid with no problems, the train was fast and this time didn’t get lost en route. Lindsay and I made our way to the hostel and hung out a bit before heading out to meet with Sarah.

She found us, and we went on a quick walk. This is my husband, Mr Blurry face, standing in the exact centre of Spain.

We had left the camera at the hostel. So I used my iphone camera. Thus no photos, you are all just going to have to believe me!

It started to rain, and Lindsay, who had started coming down with the cold I’d had the previous week, was getting sicker and sicker. Sarah took us to a restaurant for paella. After eating and chatting we went out to see it was still raining outside. So Sarah invited us back to her apartment.

It was raining even harder as we walked to Sarah’s place from the metro, but it was lovely and warm inside. We met her boyfriend who is really nice. Lindsay starting to look pretty sick. So we had to say goodbye and make our way back to the hostel. Lindsay started complaining of feel really unwell, and really cold. I thought he was suffering from a terrible bout of man-flu. But I decided to check on him just in case, and he had a really high fever! I did what I could which was basically give him some water. Then at 1am a group of Spanish people came into the dorm room, talking and turning all the lights on. I turned the lights off, gave them a dirty look and went to sleep. At 6am they got up to leave again, turning the lights on and talking… again. ARGH!

The next day Lindsay was still sick, but no fever thankfully. I had to get him to the train station so we could get to Barcelona. We made it to Barcelona, back to the hostel with no problems but then had to wait for an hour while a difficult customer was checked in. Lindsay was still really sick, and we had no food, but had to wait. So stressful.

We got our room, a private one this time. Our window opened up onto an internal courtyard/corridor light thingy. All the smells of cigarettes, cooking and bathrooms from 6 floors of apartments came into our room. Yummy. We spent 4 days in the horrible dark smelly room, while we nursed ourselves and each other back to health. Walking into the kitchen one day I was greeted by the prosthetic leg man! He excitedly said “Australia?” I nodded and that concluded our conversation.

After 4 days we were supposed to be heading to Paris. But guess what? I am sure you will never guess …. Lindsay’s clients stopped paying… again. So Paris was cancelled. Paris was too expensive and Barcelona cheap in comparison, so we had to stay in Barcelona.

The hostel we were staying in was an old apartment block, with the dorm rooms in the bedrooms of the apartment. 4 rooms of people share a kitchen, lounge room and bathroom.

We had to change apartments. In our new apartment were some very cool, and English speaking people! We met Aaron, Jessica and Alison all from the US. Oh and the unusual, jet-lagged, Mexican guy. As well as a German couple. We had 2 cards nights, and many a yarn. Once Lindsay had recovered we decided to do some sightseeing.

We walked to Guel Park to see the Gaudi mosaics.

It was pretty spectacular!