Now I remember why I prefer Spanish...

Reason number 1- (Yes I know this isn't normal but I'm using it all the same) Walking round on the last weekend of November and not even needing sleeves.

Reason 2- Tapas and Sangria, how much more stereotypical can I make this?  I'm sorry...

Reason 3- The language, it just comes to me sooo much easier than French does.

Reason 4- It's just better and I don't need to justify that.

Now to actually tell you about my trip.  If you've read my other blogs you'll know what an annoyance the airport I flew from is, it calls itself Brussels South (Charleroi), well, for anyone that doesn't know Belgium, Charleroi is a whole different town a 45 minute train ride away.  So it's a bit of a planes, trains and automobiles mission to get there but not as bad as I'd expected it to be if I'm honest.  For once in my life I didn't have a delay, up until this week every flight I have been on alone has had a delay varying from 30 mins to 3 hours.  So "that was *trumpet fanfare* Ryanair flight arriving on time!" love that little announcement just as you land.  Ellie met me at the airport and we went back to her flat, where we just chilled for a bit before realising it was actually quite late and we'd still not eaten.  We went to a tapas bar called El Tigre, for me about a year ago this would have been an utter nightmare, there were loads and loads of people, it was hot and just generally chaotic but I loved it.  With your drink they give you a mountain of tapas (and that would've been why I wouldn't have liked it about a year ago, I didn't know what I was eating), it was brilliant and very yummy.  From there we went onto a market which is full of bars and tapas stalls, again packed and very typically Spanish.  Just to carry on with the being typically Spanish theme we then went and ate churros in the sort of place  you'd only find in Spain, it was about 12.30 at night and the average age in there must've been ...55 I guess.  I said to Ellie that at home at that time it would just be the drunks and the students left out.  I even made friends with a lovely Spanish woman and her friends whilst Ellie left me unattended for just 5 minutes, she offered me some of their churros and everything!

The next day didn't get off to a great start as we didn't set any form of alarm and managed to lose our morning to sleep!  We soon got up and out and about and seeing all the sites of Madrid, or at least about half of them before we headed to meet Dan for a drink.  But that came later, first we had a very important appointment to keep with a Mr Noel Gallagher?  Don't know if you've heard of him, used to be in that band Oasis (Or to the Spanish Oh-wa-siis).  We just happened to pass the hotel he was staying at, asked the people there what they were waiting for and decided to hang around and see for ourselves.

In the evening we decided to go to the Ice Bar, now I've been to one of these before somewhere else in Spain but all I remember from that is that none of us were dressed appropriately but that it didn't really matter because they gave us a fair bit of free drink... (The lack of memory and level of drink are not linked before someone suggests it!)  This one was better than the one I'd been in before that you got a proper coat instead of the furry poncho thing I had before, but it was still just as empty.  We stuck it out for an hour though and amused ourselves so all in all it was still good fun!  After this we decided just to head back to Ellies flat and we made our own churros, some were more successful than others lets just leave it at that!  But the peanut buttercups we'd made earlier, despite looking awful, tasted really good!

Today was my last morning in Madrid so we got up at a decent time and headed off to see the rest of the city, got lots of photos which I'll put on Flickr as and when I remember.

The journey back to Brussels was uneventful and I'm now sitting in my room listening to cheesy music before I go to bed because when I wake up the reality of the washing, food shopping and work I have to do is going to hit me....