Getting there is half the battle - Wed Nov 3rd - 5th - En route to London, then Madrid

I am a bit behind on this whole blog thing, anyways, I'll start the night of my flight to London where I would connect to Madrid.

I really lucked out on this flight.  British Airways asks that you pay if you would like to book a seat in advance.  Well I had certainly planned on doing that, and I remembered planning to do it as I printed out my boarding pass with my designated middle seat for my upcoming 9-hour flight.  Luckily upon arriving to my seat, an older woman was already sitting in it next to her husband, her window seat vacant, soon to filled with my happy bottom.  Great way to start the journey, heck, I just made $30.

Of course no flight would be complete without an extremely pissed off baby.  The adorable little girl who grabbed by pant leg and backpack straps as I passed by her in the aisle on the way to my seat is now wailing to high heaven for some unsatisfied need.  I am luckily far enough away to not be bothered by it and really just more empathetic toward the mother who has two more rugrats to deal with besides the difficult one.

A sizzling "beef with vegetables & mashed potatoes"dinner later (complete with wine, italian dressing spilled all over my pillow, and constant, harrowing turbulence, which made drinking anything at all, or even keeping it on my tray and off of myself, a challenge), I was halfway through a good book and on my way to dreamland, and then London (not dreamland).

I awoke to a breakfast box that had some disgusting meat muffin thing in it.  I settled for the tiny bran muffin and yogurt and left the meat muffin alone after I almost refunded the first bite.  We circled the runway once due to excessive incoming traffic and then had a bumpier-than-I-would-have-liked landing right on time at London-Heathrow Airport.

I showed up at my connecting flight with time to spare, and we boarded on time and everything was looking good, until the captain got on the intercom (never a good sign) and informed of us our broken plane.  It would only be an extra 45 minutes.  So sure enough, after 45 minutes, we began to taxi away from the gate, then after we taxied what seemed a fair amount of time, we stopped, and then 45 minutes later, we were taking off.  So much for tonight's train to Jaén, guess I'll have to find a hostel in the night streets of Madrid while carting around 130 pounds of luggage.

After I picked up my luggage, I went with this California girl who was being met by a friend to go to the train station.  I figure it saves me the trouble of figuring out the metro.  Of course neither speaks Spanish, although the friend lives here half the year playing roller hockey (what?), and don't know the metro, so I had to figure it out anyways.

After buying my train ticket for Jaén the following morning, I set out upon the busy streets of Madrid, buzzing with nightlife, delicious smelling restaurants, and hoards of drunk people, looking like (and being) a confused American with far too much luggage, extremely hungry and tired, looking for a hostel.  After finally finding one, lugging all my things up two flights of rickety spiral staircase, I was informed the room would be 40€ (just over $50).  Seeing as how I've paid less for a hotel, I wasn't about to settle for this, so I turned around and played hardball, to which my opponent went to his lowest offer possible - 38€.  I went back to the street, and back to square one.

Luckily the next one I found, run by a one-eyed man named Carlos, went for 20€ a night, sold.  I proceeded to take one the greatest showers in recent memory and then slept hard until my 7am wake-up call.