In Madrid

Well, we are here in Madrid. Our flight to Spain was delayed for 40 minutes and the flight was very hot, heh, it´s RyanAir - budget airlines, but we arrived safely. There was no arranged seating as usual for airlines, so when it came close to flight time, the people started to line up like cattle. The flight attendants weren´t very charitable about how the spanairds behaved with the flights so I won´t repeat it but it seemd to go along fine in the end. I managed to get G an exit seat so that he had leg room. We landed and found a shuttle bus shared with another woman for only 26 euro which was great but it´s so busy here, traffic and construction, that it took us 1 hour to get to our hotel.
Madrid is something else. Similar to Mexico we find. Very poor and very crowded and the city itself is extremely old. We spent two wonderful days taking the bus to the old part of town and walking, eating, picture taking and viewing. The next day we walked in the new part of town going to museums and enjoying the 18 degree weather. Today, 21 degrees outside, we are just going for a slow walk around to places that we´ve yet to see. Gerhard is wearing his sandals.

Thursday night after we settled into our hotel, we needed to eat so we walked down the busy street of our hotel. We were invited to enter a small restaurant to eat and we had what we call - breakfast. Too funny. They gave us toastados - toast, eggs and meat. We loved it. The two guys inside the restaurant were gems. We managed with broken language. We said we were from Canada after they´d asked. The one fella said, ¨´ ah, Toronto!! ¨ We said, ¨¨No, Winnipeg, Manitoba.¨ He looked at us and asked, ¨huh?¨ I guess we aren´t really well known we Manitobans.
We went back to that same restaurant the next morning for a real breakfast and lo and behold, the female waitress heard me say ¨nein¨to Gerhard and came right over to speak German to us. Life is very funny sometimes.
I forgot to tell you more on the ongoing story of Gerhard getting used to Europe. On the way back to the hotel after our first day here, Gerhard thought that we should stop into a bar along the way. He puts his hand onto two big black doors that have¨, in Spanish, ¨¨no trespassing¨¨ pasted onto the front. I tried to pull him away and tell him no, but you know that he has his own mind. Well, he opens the door, pulls apart the curtains and is faced with ten, not nine, but ten woman of the evening who, all at once, look up at him and say, ¨¨ola!!¨¨ Sheepishly, he backs out and we had no more beer that night.

So, the rest of the bus group arrive today and we meet tonight for supper. Tomorrow, we have a free day and tour around the city or Toledo and then we leave straight away on Tuesday morning. We are very excited that things have been working out well. This is the first time that the two of us have been thrown into a country where we don´t really understand the language. It´s pretty amazing how easily we are getting along with sign language and facial and finger movements.
Onward over the mountains we go.