Posted by gina on October 08, 2006 at 14:56:17:
Hi all, we are in Spain to visit our daughter (Jeni) who is doing a semester abroad in Madrid. We arrived on Saturday, and have spent the weekend recovering from Jet Lag, and getting the lay of the land. We got a really great flight out of NYC to Madrid for about $400/each on an airline called AirPlusComet. They fly on Fridays and Mondays, and it is really OK. I totally expected a cattle car, but it was a regular 757, and they served two meals, omigod. The announcements were in Spanish, a small translation to english, but if you know the drill, who cares?
We mostly collapsed on Saturday, but ventured out to find some groceries for our little apartment (we are staying in a one bedroom apartment in the Salamanca area, right by Retiro Park), but no luck. We returned home with a couple of sandwiches, and resigned ourselves to wait for Monday when the shops are open. Today, Sunday, we went to the Rasta area for the big market, whew, way too many people. But we stumbled around, found some diet coke and butter and chips (totally necessary of course) and headed home for the siesta time. Venturing out for dinner we found an Argentinian steak house which was very nice and we had this totally great waiter, who fortunately for use spoke English, and gave us many tips on getting around the city. We are in Madrid until Thursday, anybody with any tips, post 'em now. We head from here to Majorca, then Barcelona. After that, we drive up thru the south of France, then fly to Venice, maybe venture over to Lake Como, then back to Madrid and then back to NYC. More tomorrow ....