Free Internet Access at Last!!

Well, I´m staying at a fabulous hostel in Granada with free internet access, there´s 1.5 hours till we head out for tapas, and so it´s time to catch up on my blog!!

This is from the train on the way down here

Well I´m on the train between Madrid and Granada - it´s 9:30pm, the sun is setting behind fields and rugged mountains and huge dusty plains scattered with shrubbery. It´s just like every spaghetti western you´ve ever seen. We even just passed an old whitewashed building in the middle of nowhere nd a shepherd with 3 dogs walking towards his flock at the top of a craggy hill (no I´m not making this up!!)

Madrid
Madrid was great - I love Spain. The hostal I stayed in was good - my own room and friendly easy going owners, but it meant I didn´t get to meet people so I hung out on my own a lot.

My first afternoon I went for a stroll and happened across a long queue of people outside a shop. I asked someone why everyone was queueing (a popular pastime in Cuba, but not so much elsewhere) and she told me that the shoes they were selling were incredibly cheap. Now Spain is renowned for its shoes - shoe stores, shoe makers, you name it. That style that´s going to be popular next summer all around the world? Trust me - it started in Spain. So what´s a girl to do when faced with getting hold of a bargain in the shoe capital of the world? Naturally I joined the queue.

Now my Spanish is decent, but it'd been a while, and it was my very first afternoon. Think of the language of shoe shopping - there´s the style, the colour, the fit and of course the size. Now I´d waited in that queue a long time and so I wasn´t going to chicken out. But think of the pressure of all that language with a huge queue of impatient shoe shoppers behind you.. Happily I walked out with 2 pairs of shoes, which is why my bag is an absolute nightmare, but more on that later...

The following day I went on a tour of the Royal Palace, and that night I wandered into Chueca and right into the middle of a huge Gay Dance Party / Street Festival, and suddenly felt right at home.

3 of the performers were these older women with so much makeup I actually thought they were drag queens, but no. When the last dj and the music got too house-y for me, I headed into an internet cafe and checked my email, before heading out to join the throng. I managed to make it back to the hostal around 2 am.

On Friday I did the great Art Tour of Madrid - 2 of the 3 Famous Art Museums in 1 day. I saw Valasquez´s "Las Meninas" and Picasso´s "Guernica. Finally I went to buy my ticket to Granada, took my voucher number and headed outside to escape at least part of the 1.5 hour wait. Unfortunately, when I returned, my number had been and gone, and it looked like all was lost, when a security guard suggested I approach one of the guys on the desk. I did my best "please take pity on a poor uninformed, but Spanish speaking girl who needs to go to Granada, and didn´t know I had to wait my turn inside" number, and pretty soon was on my way... ;^)

As I walked out, something was obvious. All this walking led me to the conclusion that the shoes I´d bought in NY because they had incredibly spongy comfy soles were downright painful on the tops of my feet. I´d thought a few days would break them in, but after 2 weeks crippling pain, huge welts on the tops of my feet, a fortune spent on bandaids and major shoe envy of another tourist in the Museo de La Reina Sophia to the point of thoughts of theft, it was time to trade them in.

I´ve braved sales all over the world, and compared to Jakarta and Sydney Boxing Day, Madrid´s El Cortes Ingles summer sales were fairly tame in terms of fighting shoppers, but I did find the magical shoes that have saved my feet.. They are a pair of Timberland Sandals which are super comfy and easy to walk in, and I will praise them everyday and think that the 76 Euro I spent on them was worth it...