| Some of the amazing artwork on the buildings in Piazza Mayor where you can find plenty of cafe's to enjoy the view from. |
 |
| Glenn's Madrid Journals 06-14-02 It's Friday morning and we are up early (6:30 am) to catch the 7:55 am train to Madrid. We quickly shower, eat breakfast, pack and we are out the door by 7:15 am. We stopped at the front desk to pay the gentleman for the 3 nights accomodation and off we were. We located a taxi only a few blocks from the hostal and a few minutes later we were at the train station. The train was already at the via (or binario in Italian) and we quickly boarded and got settled in for the 6 hour ride. The train station was quiet but, of course, it was 7:30 in the morning and the hustle and bustle of the town does not really start happening until after 9:00 am, or later). The train ride to Madrid was a relatively peaceful one. The coach that we were in was more empty than full and we only chatted with an American mother and daughter (from Sarasota, Florida) for a little part of the trip. Otherwise we had a chance to work on journals, read our books, and overall relax and enjoy the scenery that was passing us by. We arrived into Madrid - Atocha train station a little after 1:30 pm (we got off at Atocha instead of Chamartin train station due to the proximity to where we wanted to stay while in Madrid.). Our first stops are usually in the train station, if possible, looking for train and tourist information. We first located the train information booth as there were plenty of signs for them. We stopped in as we are trying to plan out the details of our last few train trips heading back to Milano. The young lady at the counter supplied us with information about schedules and cost of trains from Madrid to San Sebastian but had limited information on how to get from San Sebastian to Milano. We got the impression that the young lady was more just not interested in doing the research on the computer than the fact that information was not available. (Customer Service is not a strength around most of Southern Europe or at least it is based on a different criteria than the States.) We will have to go back to the train station another day to work this one out. We then asked about tourist information and were sent back the way we came to find a very tiny booth hidden away that was titled tourist information. The tourist information booth in the Atocha train station was of very little help as the map they give away for free was only of the city center and was no bigger than the map in the Lonely Planet guide book. We did obtain information on accomodations but otherwise they did not have any information on internet cafe's except to say there were quite a few in the city or second hand bookstores. We went on our way with what little information we had gathered. Our next stop was the phone booths so we could call around to verify availabilty and prices on accomodations. In a bigger city like Madrid this is important if you don't want to walk around with your packs all day or get stuck stopping at the first place with availability no matter what the price. Oh, by the way, the weather today is 39 degrees Celsius or 94 - 95 degrees Fahrenheit but luckily a little overcast and breezy so we wouldn't melt. We called around to a few from the Lonely Planet guidebook and from the list from information before we finally found a place that sounded reasonable and in good proximity of the main attractions. Madrid does have a decent metro system so we could have stayed a little farther out of town but why miss all the night life. Off we were to locate Hostal Delvi which is located just off the Plaza de Santa Ana and not far from Plaza Mayor. (Continued on next page) |