We arrived in Madrid a couple minutes early. After we got off the train Mike, Hosa, and I all went our separate directions. But I did get Mike's phone number before he left, just in case I get a chance to look him up when I pass through Normandy later in my trip.

We arrived at the Madrid Chamartin station, but I was heading to central Madrid so I caught another train to the Atocha station nearer to central Madrid. However, before doing so I reserved another Couchette to get to Lisbon Monday evening.

On the ride to Atocha, I thought I heard 3 people speaking english. Later I noticed one of them was wearing a Mountain Equipment Co-op backpack, so I just had to say "you must be from Canada?". And, not only were they from Canada, but they were from Calgary! Boy it's a small world. We chatted a bit until we got the station, them we went I our separate ways.

At the Atocha station I made my way outside and powered up my GSP device to see how far it was to the area I was heading. I did that before leaving the Chamartin station and there it said I was about 31km away, so I was a bit shocked to find I was now 42km away. I immediately new something was wrong and my first thought was that I got the directions wrong and went to the wrong station. I went back inside the station and started looking at the sub-way map to see where I needed to go, but from that map I convinced myself I was at the right station. So back outside I went and this time I used a different waypoint to see were I needed to go and this time it said I was less then 2km from my destination, so I decided to start walking. A couple blocks away, I came across a map for that area of Madrid and I could not find the place I was supposed to be going to. At that point in time I new something was wrong. I either had wrong directions or programmed the waypoints into my GSP device wrong. So, I headed back into the station to figure things out.

After re-reading my travel books I discovered I was in fact at the right station and I had programmed one of the waypoints wrong. The reason the map out side didn't show where I was going was because it was a little too far away.

So, off I went in search of a hotel. After a short walk of about 2km I arrived at the first hotel. It was supposed to have internet access, but I couldn't get it working so I decided to keep looking. The second hotel was supposed to be more expensive, because it was a bit more upscale then the first. However they wanted less then the first hotel, so I took it immediately. Here I have nice room, probably the best so far, yet its the cheapest so far. It is just 4 blocks from the center of Madrid, very close to most everything I want to see while I here, and it has somewhat of a view.

After I got the room, I got cleaned and went off in search of some food.

I'll add more details later...