Magic Bus

We arrived on Tuesday morning, around 9:30am. The flight from Newark to Madrid took just 6.5 hours, but the flight brought us a world away. Arriving in another country where English is not the primary language is a very humbling experience. Everyone around us was speaking Spanish and the CDs, podcasts, books, and that (one) class we attended to try to learn Spanish barely helped. Customs was a non-event. We picked up our luggage, exchanged some dollars for euros and caught a taxi into the city. Madrid's airport is about 20 minutes from the city. Like the US, there is construction everywhere on the highway (M30) that took us into central Madrid.

The famous Spanish architect designed our hotel, the Hotel Gaudi. It is on was of Madrid's many busy streets, Gran Via. Hotel Gaudi is a business class hotel with a beautiful marble lobby and staircase. Our room has all the normal comforts, including wireless internet, but feels so different due to the hardwood floors and walls, marble bathroom, and central electricity control- you need to insert your room keycard into an ATM-esque slot to turn on the electric for the entire room. Crazy.

After checking into our hotel room, we went directly to Starbucks. Suddenly we were at a familiar place but did not know what to say or what to do. It took us what seemed like forever to order. I'm sure the people behind us were growing impatient, just like I do when someone in the US is indecisive at Starbucks. How's that for karma?

We spent yesterday afternoon on one of those hop-on/hop-off double decker magic tour buses which gave us a great introduction to Spain's capitol city. We napped through parts of the tour, from a bit of jet lag, not boredom. We saw the palace (one of the largest and most beautiful in all of Europe), the vast commercial streets, towering cathedrals, and amazing public squares. The business district was not of tall skyscrapers; in fact the tallest office building was 39 stories. Madrid is home to one of the last buildings designed by Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the WTC twin towers. His building here in Madrid is just over 30 stories and features an eerily similar design of long and slender columns like WTC in NYC, only this building is made of concrete not steel. Madrid is a modern city, but one with history like nothing we know of in the US. With a population of almost 3 million, Madrid is the center of banking, business, and government for Spain. Madrid it is a working-person's city. Even with more than 10% unemployment. But the unemployed get into museums free-of-charge, just like students and senior citizens. OK, so maybe not the best thing to be unemployed, but at least you'll have something to do.



We returned from our afternoon on the upper deck of the bus and did what most Spaniards do in the last afternoon, we took a nap. In Madrid, it is common for the working folks to work from 10am to 2pm and then take a few hours in the afternoon as siesta before returning to work around 4:30pm until 7:30pm or so. The nightlife in Madrid is different from what we are accustomed to in the US as it starts very late. Even on weekday evenings, the bars do not begin to get busy until at least 10pm. Many bars are open until the early hours of the morning. I guess that might explain the 10% unemployment? We hit four or five of the more popular nightspots and Jon has already developed affection for some of the Spanish disco music. I found comfort in hearing Seal and Madonna and seeing a poster from our own bar, the Denver Wrangler, displayed in two of the bars we visited. On our way home we of course stopped at the McDonalds for way-too-bad-for-us food. I could not believe how very small the large (grande) Coca-Cola Light (dietCoke) was- it seemed like what I might have called a medium in the US. And there's no such thing as super-sizing anything.