Madrid: June 12th, 2007

We left San Antonio around 12:00pm central daylight time on Jun 11th, and started our 4 hour flight to Newark, New Jerzey. Needless to say, after a night of very unfitful sleep, I slept most of that flight. We arrived in Newark, and then roamed around and killed time for a couple of hours until our flight to Madrid began to board. Like the previous flight, this one was packed. I sat next to my best friend Sarah, and chit chatted about nothing until we pulled away from the terminal. As we were pulling away, the Captain came on the intercom and said we´d be delayed an hour because there was a long line of planes ahead of us. A groan went up from everyone on the flight, it was loud enough that I´m pretty sure the folks up in the air control tower heard it. I chuckled and pulled out one of the two books I had brought along and began to read it.

I have no idea how much time actually passed until the Captain came back on the intercom and said we were preparing to take off, but almost as soon as he said it we began to taxi onto the runway and were in the air in less than 5 minutes. The flight was uneventful. Once again, I could not sleep, so I decided to watch the inflight movies and listen to my MP3 player. The 6 hour flight from Newark, New Jerzey to Madrid, Spain passed by like a lifetime. I tried as hard as I could to sleep, but the combination of the freezing plane cabin, people talking, and having to sit upright in an uncomfortable airplane chair made it entirely too hard to sleep. I´m pretty sure I´d have had an easier time sleeping in the fires of hell, atleast there I wouldn´t be so cold I was shivering and my teeth wouldn´t be chattering.

We arrived in Madrid around 12:00pm Greenwhich Mean Time, and went through customs and sat around waiting for our luggage to be delived to us via a carousel, not too uncommon from the ones like back in San Antonino. Two of the people in our group were missing their bags, so we had to wait for them to talk to the airline about where they were. In the mean time I went to minibar and grabbed a couple beers and sat down with the group and began to drink them. After an hour or so, the two people who´s bags had been missing walked up to the group with their missing bags and we boarded a bus and headed off to the hotel.

We took some time to refresh at the hotel and then headed off to the Royal Palace. It was hot, but not like south Texas. It wasn´t as humid as South Texas, thank god. The palace was nice and cool. After walking around the palace for an hour or so, we headed off on a driving tour of the city for a while. I fell asleep after 2 nights of no sleep, so I cant´really say what all went on during the tour.

Finally, we went to dinner. The food tasted weird, and I have no idea was alot of it was, but atleast the second course had steak. A definate God send. I had a cold beer to wash it all down, and then walked around the town listen to the sound of the cars and people chatting.

Anyway, I´m running out of time at the cafe so I have to leave. I´ll update again tomorrow.