Madrid

Julie’s intention was to leave our free camping spot at 9:30 and check into the campsite at 10 (when most campsites seem to be open, some open earlier). This of course, didn’t happen. Of course there was the increasing sound of traffic being parked along a main road and the occasional passing conversations. But what we didn’t expect was to hear a conversation and have the van shake once in a while. By the time the van rocked the third time I had enough. It wasn’t much of a shake, but it was around 8 and we were planning on visiting Madrid, so I suggested to just get up. When Julie opened our blinds to see what was shaking the van she was surprised to see a pair of work gloves on the mirror. It turns out that a couple of workers were slacking off under the cover our van. So when we left they were not happy, as they had to get back to work. It was good that we got up early, as we learnt that the campsite opened at 7am, so we were able to check-in early.

First, a little bit about the campsite. This place is huge with well over a 1000 places to park. The facilities were modern and nice. This place also had WiFi, at a cost of 10 euros for the day. We bought into this, but were disappointed as the connection speed was so slow, that at times we couldn’t even load up a page without it timing out. Oh well, it did prove itself somewhat useful when it did work. We missed the bus into Madrid by minutes; we watched it drive passed our stop. Something we tend to due, apparently we don’t walk or get ready as fast as we think we do. So it was a wait of about an hour, we debated heading back to the van but decided that missing the bus again would be worse than waiting the hour. When we got off the bus in the downtown area of Madrid, the first thing we saw was a giant monument that resembled the Brandenburg Tor in Berlin, just a smaller version. We wandered around the town for what seemed like forever trying to find the Plaza Mayor (old town square). After a few misguided turns, a funny looking building - the top of which reminded me of a space ship from Star Trek. We then stumbled on what seemed to be the site of a movie or maybe just a star being in a certain hotel (we think it had to be a male actor as there were hordes of young girls) we managed to find the Plaza Mayor (Finally Julie says). However, we weren’t all that impressed. The entire square is dedicated towards tourists and was therefore ugly. We didn’t hang around too long. Julie did however contemplate buying us some ice cream from a Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream shop. After that sight, we decided to visit the royal palace, but not venture inside. It was nice from the outside but nothing too impressive. I wish we ventured into a free tapas bar, but I’m not entirely sure I would enjoy it anyway. Once we get to our resting place for December, we should check one out then anyway. Checking out the night life in any large city would be fun, but with money being the way it is and bus schedules the way they are, we just can’t have that kind of fun right now. When we made it back to where the bus dropped us off earlier, we managed to wait around and freeze our butts off for over 45 minutes before heading into the main terminal. It turns out that our bus driver should have dropped us off below street level, not above, so we had missed a few busses and ended up waiting in the proper place for about 10 minutes. It was so cold and windy that night that we contemplated hanging out in the heated bathrooms instead of the van. We are not sure how much propane we have left and haven’t been able to replace or fill our spare tank.