Staying in Hostels with free breakfast is not only cost efficient, it's a great alarm clock. If you know us (which hopefully you do because you're reading our blog creep) then you know if there is one thing that will get these two professional sleepers out of bed in the morning, it´s breakfast. After much thought yesterday about where to stay,we agreed our best option was paying a few extra euros for somewhere that includes breakfast. It sounds dumb, but it's actually a great travel tip. Anyway, up and at it today about 930 for croissants, muffins, baguettes and coffee. Yum! We decided to be super homeless and steal some muffins that 2 other people had left behind in their bread basket..then 20 minutes later we decided to be skinny so we threw them away...then 3 hours later we found ourselves with mouthfulls of tapas. Consistency was really never our thing. Anyway, back to this enthralling tale of our day...we had about an hour til check out and we wanted to take one last awesome private bathroom shower before we packed. 10 past noon we inevitably got a call asking us to check out to which we played dumb. Kelly, who was pretty much ready, took the key down while Jenny attempted to put her life back into her pack quicker than ever...always a struggle for the weakest link. That bitch is always running late! (haha for real I am always late though).
Leaving hostel awesomeness (minus the peculiar smell of indian food) we walked to the train station to reserve our seats for an afternoon train to Madrid. While there Kelly had her first traveling crisis. Her bag (identical to Jenny's) decided it wanted to start coming apart. These big packs have wire support in the back which is kind of crucial; well Kelly´s is coming out, which now results in a piece of metal poking her in her bodacious booty. Awesome. Jenny the handyman (um, woman!) gave it her best fixing skills but no go. Hopefully when it's unloaded we can fix it and duct tape the crap out of it, a great skill that Jenny´s dad Simon will surely help us with in Barcelona, duct tape is his fave. Cross your fingers everyone, this is kind of a big deal. A backpacker with no backpack is like...well, a homeless person. We have to laugh off our backpack woes because at least we´re not rolling giant suitcases around, right? Still feeling great! And it was warmer and sunnier today! Woot woot!
We strolled towards the ocean and stopped at a tapas place near where we went last night. They had tons of outdoor tables so we stopped for fried meatball pintoxs and minis. We love it here! We are vibing with Spain and San Sebastian is gorgeous... We can only imagine what an awesome summer vacation destination it would be. After our snacks, we took advantage of a playground overlooking the ocean where we could sit and swing.We walked around, trying to capture a picture of how beautiful it is here but it just isn't possible. oh well! Just for our own memories when we look back, it really is amazingly pretty! The streets are extremely clean and lined with strange trees and huge flower beds with every color in full bloom. The salt water mists up as you get to the coast and the waves crashing on the rocks along the coast are amazing. Come to San Sebastion on your next vacation! We will certainly be back.
Post tapas we still obviously decided snacks for the train were a must, so we picked up some fruit at a street vendor and headed to catch our train. This is our first daytime train so we got to see so much spanish countryside and it was breathtaking. Green, rolling, landscapes, enormous mountains, and periodic little towns or villages. As the sun went down, so did our eyelids. We knew we needed a power nap before Madrid. Madrid is an awesome city, but the "thing" to experience here is the nightlife....so that´s the plan.
Off our train we figured out how to hop on the metro and find our hostel. The metro here is SO clean! Almost beautiful! None of that stinky rat filled Paris, London, NYC stuff! We turned on our pick-pocket watching eyes hardcore as soon as we got here- so far so good (KNOCK ON WOOD); we pull our rain covers over our backpacks, blocking all the crazy zipped pockets, which is a good start hopefully, but makes us look extra suspicious. Finding our hostel in the dark wasn´t as easy as we hoped...(safety first parents, don´t worry) so we wandered (with purpose of course) until someone who could obviously tell we were lost pointed us to Cats Hostel (we had already passed it a time or two). Luckily they had a room for us, so we threw our suitcases in our 4 bunk dorm, where two very serious backpackers with pots and pans, sleeping bags, camping silverware...other weird stuff that we don´t know about, and a cordless house phone (a couple, maybe german?) was trying to go to sleep. We made a quick run up to the road to get fast food (never go clubbing on an empty stomach guys, duh) and then changed and threw on some makeup. We picked a direction to go out as we left the hostel and it turned out to be a great one! It was like Chinatown for bars... promoters everywhere "free shot? you want free shot over here?!". Soon one of the promoters turned out to be really nice and spoke great English- David. He had lived in Miami for a long time before Madrid and told us where to go and how it works here... pubs from 12-3ish then the clubs. So we headed into his pub, Commo, and had ourselves a free beer and some dancing. We all know what a pub is...but apparently the Madrillanos do not. This was a nightclub if we have ever seen one, flashing lights, 3 dance floors, bumping music and music vids, and lots of bars and shots and girls in tiny skirts. We made some friends and Kelly attempted some salsa dancing with a tall french/indian guy who seemed to speak spanish? From here, David was nice enough to pick out a good club down the road where we made a few friends...one whose name we cant remember but ONLY drank Kentucky Bourbon and was thrilled to meet a Kentuckian and tell her. ha! This club was huge and we hopped up on the enormous stage and danced the night away...literally until morning. Love Espana! We made it home...at some point. Kelly passed out, Jenny Skyped and we werent a bit worried the sun was coming up. Viva Madrid!
Off our train we figured out how to hop on the metro and find our hostel. The metro here is SO clean! Almost beautiful! None of that stinky rat filled Paris, London, NYC stuff! We turned on our pick-pocket watching eyes hardcore as soon as we got here- so far so good (KNOCK ON WOOD); we pull our rain covers over our backpacks, blocking all the crazy zipped pockets, which is a good start hopefully, but makes us look extra suspicious. Finding our hostel in the dark wasn´t as easy as we hoped...(safety first parents, don´t worry) so we wandered (with purpose of course) until someone who could obviously tell we were lost pointed us to Cats Hostel (we had already passed it a time or two). Luckily they had a room for us, so we threw our suitcases in our 4 bunk dorm, where two very serious backpackers with pots and pans, sleeping bags, camping silverware...other weird stuff that we don´t know about, and a cordless house phone (a couple, maybe german?) was trying to go to sleep. We made a quick run up to the road to get fast food (never go clubbing on an empty stomach guys, duh) and then changed and threw on some makeup. We picked a direction to go out as we left the hostel and it turned out to be a great one! It was like Chinatown for bars... promoters everywhere "free shot? you want free shot over here?!". Soon one of the promoters turned out to be really nice and spoke great English- David. He had lived in Miami for a long time before Madrid and told us where to go and how it works here... pubs from 12-3ish then the clubs. So we headed into his pub, Commo, and had ourselves a free beer and some dancing. We all know what a pub is...but apparently the Madrillanos do not. This was a nightclub if we have ever seen one, flashing lights, 3 dance floors, bumping music and music vids, and lots of bars and shots and girls in tiny skirts. We made some friends and Kelly attempted some salsa dancing with a tall french/indian guy who seemed to speak spanish? From here, David was nice enough to pick out a good club down the road where we made a few friends...one whose name we cant remember but ONLY drank Kentucky Bourbon and was thrilled to meet a Kentuckian and tell her. ha! This club was huge and we hopped up on the enormous stage and danced the night away...literally until morning. Love Espana! We made it home...at some point. Kelly passed out, Jenny Skyped and we werent a bit worried the sun was coming up. Viva Madrid!
No comments:
Post a Comment