Year Abroad - Where I leave home and arrive in Madrid...

Hola bloggerinos…those who watch Supernatural should get this reference and those who don’t should watch it so that you know. 

That’s me in Spain now.  As I type I am on board a rather spacious Talgo class RENFE train to Linares-Baeza where my new landlord shall be waiting to pick me up and take me to my new home.  This post is going to focus mainly on my trip from oh so Sunny Scotland to somewhere where it’s hard to use that ironically. 

I left my house yesterday, gosh that feels so long ago, at half past five in the morning…!  I forgot that such a thing existed.  We were all emotional.  Sometimes this year abroad thing seems like a cruel and unusual punishment as I am separated from friends and family.  But of course it is a once in a lifetime experience and I am going to look back on all my misadventures with a sense of nostalgia and as Xavier says in L’auberge espagnole “It’s the bad experiences which make the best stories and over time you come to love telling them”.  The airport was hard, having to leave my family at the security check-in.  Luckily I had a lot of things to worry about.

I was really worried about the suitcase.  I was flying BA and then a connecting flight with Iberia and the weight limit was quite a generous, if you just going on holiday, 23 kg.  I had to fit the majority of my clothes and other things that I was taking into this and let’s just say it didn’t go to well.  I think in the end I re-packed three or four times.  And it was still over…at least BA aren’t Easyjet or Ryanair and they didn’t charge for the .8kg over.  It was also checked-in all the way to Madrid which meant that when I got to Heathrow I could just transfer without having to collect and re-check it in.  I had hours to wait in Heathrow which was very tedious.  Because of the weight of my hand luggage, around 16 kg, I couldn’t carry it around the terminal so I just had to sit there and wait. 

The flights themselves were nice.  On the shuttle from Glasgow to Heathrow I had seat 17F and spent most of the hour looking out of the window and at the pictures in the newspaper.  I wasn’t really in the frame of mind needed for reading or listening to stuff.  There was a spare seat next to me and myself and the wee Glasgae man shared the space putting our stuff there.  On the second flight I had seat 27F and had an entire row to myself.  Since Iberia don’t have very much legroom I just sat with my feet up!  My neck is sore from looking out the window. 

I arrived in Madrid around half 4/5 o’clock local time.  Got my bags and got my taxi.  Ended up being 40 euros…the website said it should be around 30.  But I was there.  Over half my journey was done.  I lugged my bags up to my hostal, the hostal Tijcal 2, on calle de la cruz.  It was a decent room and the location was really good.  Right in the centre of Madrid, very close to la Plaza Mayor and La Puerta del Sol.  Off for a walk I went.           

I had to go buy my ticket from Atocha train station, a place about 10 minutes walk from where I was staying.  But since I had decided to explore a little bit, it took me over an hour to get there.  In the meantime I had seen nearly every tourist attraction in the city, and now know what I want to see and do the next time I'm in Madrid...in 11 days.  Atocha train station is like a jungle, literally.  I had to wait quite a while until my number was called and I bought my ticket to Linares-Baeza.

The rest of this night was spent walking around, and then watching some TV in the hostal.  I was too exhausted to do much else.  And I still had to get to Baeza...

To be continued...