Magical Madrid

after a blog mini-break I'm actually going to finish up my summary of my Roman/Spanish adventure. I failed to inform you about my time in Madrid.

I was in the capital city for a few days by myself and really had no idea what I was going to do there because I basically just decided to go because I got a ticket for free and only a tenner for my bag. So off I went, armed with a hostel booked and directions to get there.

Well I arrived in the evening to a nice quiet hostel that was in a neighbourhood that was quite obviously in the middle of the gay district (this will come into play later on in my adventures). My room had six beds in it, of which three were available for me to chose from. I decided to chose a bed near the back of the room, mainly because the other two beds were end to end- and by end to end I mean that if I had slept in one of them I would have been touching feet with the person in the other bed.

There was a girl in the room at the time who said she was just about to head to a flamenco show with another guy from the hostel and asked me to join. For sure I was joining in this adventure. This flamenco show was traditional to the max. It was all in Spanish and the first bit appeared to be some sort of play like ghetto set up of a practice session with the musicians where the main guitarist- who I would describe as being a Spanish version of David Suzuki- would stop and talk to the audience or yell at the lighting and tech guys. Turns out the guy we were with is from California and spoke Spanish and he said what was really happening was that they were not acting, Latino David Suzuki was actually pissed at the venue and the dancers just hadn't got their costumes on yet.

Luckily the second half of the act included costumes, amazing music, and some crazy ass dancing. There is insane passion in the dancing and I've never seen feet move so face- or faces look like they are passing kidney stones, or having a zipper installed on their ass cracks.

All good though me and my new friends strolled around the busy squares afterwards, and they told me about some things that I should see and they told me about a huge flea market that happens in the streets on Sundays. My new little friend was going to go and we decided that we would head down together. But first things first we obviously needed a coffee from Starbucks. Shit doesn't open until 9 and its only 830- but don't worry there are still people out partying from the night before who would like a coffee at this point too: enter stereo typical camp gay couple and their token short fat flamboyant friend. These men were amazing. Short/fat guy whom I will now refer to Latino Danny Devito had a directors scarf on and waved his arms in the air like e was surrounded by flies.

He took one look at my friend and yelled 'you are very gay'. He was convinced of my friends gayness and explained in various ways how he was gay. We were laughing hysterically and then learned the phrase- you are more gay then a peseta; which is a very pretty Spanish coin. Anyways they ranted on and on and Latino Devito talked about my lovely blue eyes for awhile until the store opened. He then went in and stole a bunch of caramel waffles and pissed off all the employees.

It was off to the flea market which was actually the largest flea market in Europe= amazing!!! I got some fantastic stuff and had a wonderful time looking at everything from leather to used light switch sockets- interesting.

The rest of Madrid I went around the city and art galleries and found a bunch of peacocks in the national park which I then chased and collected the feathers I scared out of them as a lovely souvenir.