At last! We’re in Madrid! April 15, 2008

Hi everybody!

You’ll be pleased to hear that we are now firmly ensconced in our hotel in bonny Madrid. The journey was a bit of a pain in the chookeroos. We got to the car park and left our car, but they good people at Edinburgh Airport’s Cheap-O-Park hadn’t any record of our reservation because we hadn’t made it until yesterday morning. I was a bit peeved about this, but they dealt with it quickly enough, and I was too pleased to be going on holiday to bother with getting my moaning head on.

Anyways, we got to the airport and had a couple of beers in the pub before heading over to the departure lounge. Our gate was changed at the last minute to accomodate a Saga Air trip to Cardiff, and we were herded off to another part of the airport for the last queue in Scotland. Those of you who know me will be aware that I love Spain. I really do. Absolutely everything about it. But I will say one thing (Gill’s heard me say this a dozen times): Spanish people are really the worst queuers in Europe. In their defence in this instance, they were being ordered around in English by some EasyJet nyaff, and had already been shunted from one gate to another. But generally, I don’t think it’s a concept that goes down well with our Iberian cousins. Eventually, in a moment of no-prisoner-taking, we got onto the plane, sat on it and flew to Madrid. Incidentally, we watched a couple of episodes of Dirty Sexy Money while we were onboard, and it is excellent. You really should watch it.

On the way to Edinburgh airport, I remarked to Gill (I didn’t just go ahead and say it) that travelling by air is like a modern equivalent of Dante’s Inferno and the Seven Circles of Hell. Bear with me here. Leaving the flat in sunny Glasgow was the first part, you lock the door and you have surrendered control of that. The second stage of that is leaving the car at the car park – with every step you lose a bit more control and deal with a little bit more beauraucracy. This continues through airport check-in, security, getting through the gate and finally, the ultimate loss of control – letting some guy (who might be drunk) balance you 30,000 feet in the air for 3 hours. The fun just starts there though, because once you land, you have to contend with getting your bag off of a carousel with 200 of Europe’s most impatient citizens around you, get through passport control, then find your hotel and get into it. Only once you have been through each and every one of those stages can you truly say that you are on holiday.

And thank goodness, we are now. It had taken us about 20 minutes to find the metro station at the airport, then a further forty or so to get to the city, encompassing a couple of changes as well. The Madrid metro was impressive, certainly very clean and spacious, though this did alter slightly once we were off the brand-spanking-new Airport Line and into the more central lines, but all of this augured well for the trip ahead. Once we got off at Sol, we had a furtive look in our Lonely Planet and a quick discussion before heading off in the right direction for our hotel. We managed to do this quite inconspicuously, because nobody really wants to be carrying a rucksack and a guidebook in an unknown city after midnight. Inconspicuously, I say, because nobody tried to jump us at least.

We were both impressed with how busy the place was, even after midnight on a Monday. Compare that with Glasgow, where the city centre’s normally pretty dead on Mondays, bar a few jakies, and maybe some waster students up the Garage. Bags down in the hotel, and off out for a bite to eat in a local bar (it having been some time since we last did so). We found a place that sold us a round sandwich, which they filled in two halves for us – Gill got jamón with a garlicky tomato sauce, and I plumped for the morcilla (el black puddin), which tasted remarkably (but not quite) like haggis. Yum!

Then, twas to bed. Unfortunately, we’ve bollocksed up slightly, and I don’t think we’re able to put pictures up while we’re here due to a missing piece of hardware, but we’ll endeavour to fix this. If not, we’ll put them on Flickr when we get back and those of you and such of you can have a swatch when we get home.

Further updates to come!