Madrid

After an uncomfortable overnight flight without reclining seats on Iberia, I arrived to Madrid. First stop out of th Arrivals Gate was the ATM to stock up on some euros. Just as the money was coming out a pregnant lady came up asking for money. I shooed her off and then got my receipt from the ATM but no cash. After 5 months in Sth America this girl just picked on the wrong bloke. She was still in sight, so grabbed her, found my wad of cash in her had and then proceeded to drag her kicking and screaming past the queues of people at the check in counter to the cop shop. After only 10 minutes in Europe I experience more crime than in 5 months in Sth America. Once the paper work was done, I metroed into town to my hostel. It was a nice change to have an extra 5 hours of sunlight in the evening, and so I walked around the Plaza Mayor, past the King´s Palace, some parks. All the streets and plazas were filled with outdoor cafes and restaurants with tourists from all over Europe enjoying tapas and beer for their summer holidays.
We headed out to party with everyone from the hostel, which turned out to be a group of 15 of us. All the bar owners were keen to get this big group of people on their dancefloor, so it was free shots all round, then we would hang around for 30 minutes before heading onto some more free drinks at the next disco.
On Friday I went into the King´s Palace where they had gone all out on the interior designing. Plenty of fancy treasures to check out too. In the afternoon I wandered through the huge Retiro park with some fancy monuments of old kings and down Gran Via, the main strip in town.
We headed back out to party with our big group of people, but someone made the mistake of giving the navigation task to a French girl and we ended up walking around a big circle of the city all night. One lesson learnt!