Dinner of Champions - Spain style

Santiago de Compostela - Madrid

This morning after breakfast we said good bye to my parents and Aunt and Uncle. They are heading up the coast for another few weeks of traveling in the little seaside towns. Part of me wishes that we could stay together for longer, but another part of me is eager to hit the big city - my favorite part of a Europe trip.

Honore and I spent the morning touring the cathedral's museum in Santiago, getting some food for the trip and drinking one last cafe con leche. Then it was a taxi to the train station,  and another cafe con leche, followed by a 7 hour train trip. And then a 40 minute subway ride, changing trains twice. Before our trip, I had been worried about the fact that we would be arriving at the hotel after 10pm. It wasn't the fanciest hotel around and I was worried they wouldn't hold our room because it was so LATE. I even had Honore compose an e-mail to remind them that we would be getting there late. Well. I clearly had no idea what the Spanish daily schedule is like.

Our hotel is on a pedestrianized street - Calle Arenal. As soon as we walked up the stairs out of the subway, it was packed with people. So many people! It looked like middle of the day, at the mall, Saturday. Crazy. We found our hotel, dumped our bags and after the front desk guy warned us repeatedly about watching our bags (apparently bag theft is a huge problem) we headed out to walk around. Our hotel is just down the road from the Royal Palace and since we aren't going to have time to properly visit it, we spent about 20 minutes walking around the grounds.

We had decided to skip dinner tonight since we ate on the train and we were here late, blah blah blah and instead went straight out for churros and chocolate. This place was about 6 blocks from our hotel and it was PACKED. It's now about 11:30 at night. The nightclub next door to the churros place just opened and we snagged the last table in the street. Holy cow was it worth it though. Just for the chocolate alone. So sweet, but not too sweet, and drinkable but a little thick. We sat there for about an hour, sucking down our chocolate, eating fried dough and just enjoying all the craziness that is Madrid. I've only been here 3 hours but so far I love this city. Tomorrow - the Prado.