Policeman and Prostitutes and Lesbians Oh My!

 So I've just returned from Madrid where I had a roaring good time with one of my best friends Jillian. It was a weekend full of in-your-face real life situations. Por ejemplo...

Numero 1 - Getting Lost on the Way to the Hostel and Totally Flummoxing a Policeman 
After meeting up in la Estacion Sur de Autobuses in Madrid, which in itself was quite interesting since we decided to wait for each other in two different places, Jillian's phone didn't have any minutes left on it for me to contact her with, and we weren't even sure we were in the same bus station to start out with, we hopped on the metro following the directions I had scrawled down in my notebook that morning. We got off at the indicated metro stop and wandered around in the pouring rain until we happened upon the first street in my series of directions. We checked off each step without any problems until we came to the last step: finding the actual street the hostel was on. My instructions informed me that we were supposed to make a right turn off the street we were on, but as we walked and walked, and kept on walking, we began to suspect that either we or the directions had messed up at some point. We stopped at a busier looking street to find someone to ask for directions when a cop car pulled to the side of the road. Perfect! In elementary school they teach you that cops are there to help you when you are lost! How lucky were we! We scurried over and motioned the cop to roll down his window. He obliged and I explained (in Spanish) that we were looking for our hostel but couldn't find the street it was on. He pulled out a little book of maps that I guess cops carry in their pockets and started rather half-heartily looking through it. He was browsing through the index and taking his own sweet time, when his cop buddy came on over too. I explained the problem to him and he whipped out his little map book, found the street we were looking for in about two seconds, and told us it was right there. I guess the other cop wasn't really trying that hard. Anyway, it turned out that the street we needed to turn down was to the left, not the right. Problem solved, we ducked into the hostel and checked in sure everything would be super smooth from that point on. In fact immediately we were confronted by problema numero dos...

Numero 2 - Finding a Movie Theater Using the Method of Wandering Around
After checking in, we dumped our sheets on the beds that (we thought) were free and headed back down to front desk to ask where we could find a (preferably English language) movie theater in order to see Amanecer (Breaking Dawn to you none Spaniards out there) which was kinda the point of the trip. However, the front desk man informed us that there was no extra laptops for us to use and he was too busy checking people in to look it up for us since he wasn't even from Madrid either and didn't know where the movie theaters were. Undaunted, we set out anyway and stopped at a bar to get some tapas and cañas to fortify ourselves for the search. I asked the bar tender where we could find movie theaters, and he told us that there were some on Grand Vía, the next street over. Long story short, after walking in the wrong direction on Grand Vía and stopping at a theater that wasn't showing the movie, we achieved our goal of buying tickets to watch Breaking Dawn opening night in Spain! Now all that was missing was the candy, and the search for it directly leads to real life situation number three...


Numero 3 - Walking Down a Street Full of Prostitutes 
Now they all could have been a group of perfectly normal ladies just out for the evening in thigh high boots, short skirts, and extremely low cut tops... but the more likely scenario is that they were a bunch of prostitutes. 


Candy bought and movie seen (absolutely hysterical btw), Jillian and I were tired and ready for bed. We headed back to the hostel with visions of sheets and individual beds dancing in our heads. These wouldn't seem like things that were out of reach, yet this weekend that's pretty much what they ended up being, leading us to real life situation number four...


Numero 4 - Being Mistaken for a Lesbian Couple for the Whole Weekend
Opening the door to our room, we noticed immediately that there were people sleeping in the beds we had placed the sheets on. This was not a good development. Searching with the light from my cellphone we found two beds without people, however, one of which had a suitcase and other crap piled on top of it. That left one bed for the two of us, but where did our sheets go? We thought we saw them sitting on one of the occupied beds, so with the stealth of a ninja, we took them out from under the sleeping girl and made the bed with them. Jillian and I are used to sharing beds from our riding team days so it didn't really faze us, but it probably did lead the rest of our roommates to the wrong conclusion when they noticed us sharing the bed. Jillian told me that at one point during the night, one of the guys came back (probably drunk) stumbled into our bed, did a double take and started for a few minutes, before going and passing out into his own bed. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. 


Though it may not seem that way, Jillian and I had a super-duper fantastic weekend and took all the problems as just amusing bumps in the road. It was so much fun to see her, since it turned out we hadn't seen each other since the previous December. We did the whole touristy thing and went to the Prado, Natural History museums to see some dinosaurs, Reina Sofia, etc. All in all it was a great time and it was very sad to say goodbye at the bus station on Sunday. Next time we see each other it will be stateside! 

AMANECER!!!

A much needed breakfast at Dunkin Coffee (not Donut here in Spain)

Jillian and I outside of Reina Sofia