4.30am, Alarm goes off and I could definitely do with another couple of hours sleep! In typical fashion after spending a couple of weeks back in blighty, Friday night at the Wheatsheaf rolled into Saturday night at the Wild Duck which culminated with a farewell dinner last night at the potting shed in Crudwell with mum.
So under firm instructions from dad to leave at 5.30am on the dot, it’s sometime after that that we are loaded up and on our way round the M25 to Gatwick – the plus point to this late start (and thus arrival) as far as my father is concerned is the saving on the cost of parking for him at the airport! After a big hug kerbside we check in, we present our passports, booking confirmation, and are then asked for our return / onward flight details out of Argentina, “our what?” Kelly and I reply in unison. Seems there may have been a minor ommission in the pre trip planning, oops.
Some 4 phone calls and 20 minutes later we are granted our boarding cards, seems that an email, from someone in Air Europa, dated just 3 days ago has removed this previously mandatory requirement, guess we’ll find out tomorrow after our stopover in Madrid whether the Argentine Customs got the email!
Touchdown in Madrid with 10 hours to spare – a hastily made plan, after a cursory look the night before in the lonely planet (Spain) see’s us emerging from the airport via the metro in Plaza del Sol, the heart of Madrid’s CBD. It’s 4pm and we’re ready for a feed, so we head towards the Plaza Mayor – unimpressed at the 1.01 central square in a capital’s attractions (read fat man in a spiderman suit who to be honest looked more like a bank robber and snap happy japs taking pictures) we wander on to the next quarter, La Latina, less touristy and a bit more like it.
It is here that our Spanish lessons really begin to pay off, well not quite we both end up with surprises as our main courses and Kelly a half bottle of red wine instead of a glass.
From here we wander merrily towards the Palacio Real through the oriental gardens famed for their ornate statues, police horses drinking from fountains and sheisha smoking teens.
This took us through to the main drag, Gran Via on which our wine clocks both went off, pausing on Calle de Preciados for just long enough to realise that only beer and prostitues were on offer, we followed our noses to a Calle de Barcelona. Ordered un grande cerveza y un vaso de vino tinto and were surprised when 2 beers and 2 wines turned up – when queried, we heard the words loved by all budget travellers….. it was happy hour. Well it ended up being 3, happy, hours, before we left slightly worse for wear for the airport and B.A.! Guess we won’t have any problem sleeping on the flight….
Cheers for now
Matt x
Words from The View 
Apparently you can lead a horse to water and make it drink. Years of homespun wisdom down the drain. Well done MC and Kell, looking forward to the next update. The roses and lavender still bloomin’ marvellous. Also MC, fairy lights in place. Happy trails. MT
i always look for budget travel these days because it is not easy to earn money in these economic crisis times.;
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