Ole!--Day 1

5 May 2010
Madrid, Spain
via Rome, Italy (8 May 2010)

We slept in pretty late, but still managed to get an early start to the airport. This turned out to be fortunate, as the RER (commuter train) to the airport is a ridiculous thing. For those of you who use the metro to get to the Charles DeGaulle airport, you must purchase an additional ticket for the RER in order to exit the train station once you reach the airport. Don't be fooled by the fact that the RER doesn't require this ticket for you to get ONTO the train. Anyhow, we spent a good thirty minutes trying to get through the little glass partition. I hate to admit it, but we managed to sneak out behind some people. I'd say the CDG airport really needs to do something about this, though, as about 90% of people who were exiting the RER had the same problem. Thankfully, a few people had the insider info, so we were able to do a little tailgating. We did save quite a bit of money going this route, but it was a big headache too.

We flew to Milan first with an hour layover to Madrid. We boarded the plane by piling on a bus that took us out to where the plane was on the runway. This was Josh's first experience boarding a plane this way. I'd disembarked once before on my trip to Rome several years ago. It's definitely different from the US.

We got to the Madrid airport, located the metro station, and managed to find our way to Silvia's place by around 9:00pm. She and her boyfriend Javie (short for Javier--and remember J's are pronounced like H's in Spain) welcomed us. We sat around chatting for a bit, then Javie and Silvia made us Spanish omelettes for dinner. I'm not a big fan of eggs--I actually really dislike them--but I thought I should give this a try since I was in Spain and all.

It was AWESOME. I think I'm going to try to make this at home when I get back to Memphis. It's really more potato and onion with egg to hold it together, so you can't really even taste the eggs! We also had chorizo in ours. Sooooo good.


Then we went to bed so we could get up in the morning to start our Madrid sightseeing. Silvia's apartment was very nice. She lives with two other girls, but only one of them was there while we stayed with her. Her living room was enormous and even had two couches so neither of us had to sleep on an air mattress or the floor! The kitchen was small, but that seems to be common in European apartments. The bathroom also had a real shower which was a nice change from the French bathtubs we'd been using.