Madrid, Paris and some very burnt hair!
Trip Start
Feb 24, 2006
1
24
43
Trip End
Feb 24, 2007
Barcelona, Spain
Sunday, June 25, 2006
As the title suggests, I have once again had the pleasure of a hairdresser who confuses blond with orange, except this time she failed to work around the orange from last time and ended up burning some of my hair off! I look like I have a kind of fuzzy white light hovering around my head! Oh dear! I guess thats what you get when you cant speak the language and fail to learn from your mistakes!
I dont think I mentioned Madrid much in the last entry so I will start from there. We arrived into Madrid at 7am after leaving New York at 6pm. The flight was only 7 hours so it was a bit of a shock to my body clock. Okay, perhaps the last few nights in New York contributed to the pain but basically we ended up walking around like zombies for most of the day. We had an afternoon nap and intended to go on a bus tour of Madrid before finding somewhere to watch the Brazil vs Australia game. We woke up at about 4pm and had showers. By the time we got on the bus it was about 5pm and the game was starting at 6. So it was a very brief city tour and possibly a complete waste of 14 euros! As you all know Ausralia lost and that was about the extent of our day!
The following day we went walking around the city. We were both having money issues so decided to stick to the budget activities. Parks and shopping! Plus, the museums were closed so we didnīt have much choice. We decided to make that our night out as we had been very boring on the Sunday night. A cute boy we met in New York had recommended a place called Kapitol which is apparently a 7 level night club. We planned to head there but after walking halfway across the city because the lonely planet map was missing half the damn streets (it looked like 2 streets away but was actually about 10!) we realised it was closed on Monday. Madrid is meant to be a party city and we passed absolutely nothing that was even remotely exciting. so we ended up sitting at a little outside bar drinking Stella (reasonably priced Stella if my memory serves me right!). After it started storming we jumped in a cab to head back to the hostel, the cab driver was like Ļyou ladies not going to the discotecque?Ļ (how the hell do you spell that??) He recommended one called Joy something-a-rather which he said was always good, even on a Monday! Entry was 12 Euros and included a free drink, we were convinced by the bouncer who told us we would definately not be disappointed (never listen to the bouncer!)! The place was almost empty and there was about 10 men for every female there, 10 not so good quality men for every female I should say! So we decided to just make the most of it and danced our little hearts out while conveniently readjusting our direction to avoid eye contact with ugly men!! When we went to buy a second round a guy called Diego (how very Spanish!) and his friend Fernando (I may have made that up, he had, like, ten names!)offered us to join them at his table for drinks! Never two to turn down free alcohol we joined the cool kids behind their little rope! When we went back to have a beer later, they were 12 Euros each! 12 Euros! madness! Thats, like $25 per beer and again, it was Heineken! And no amount of arguing by the nice Spanish boys could change it. Apparently at Joy, its such a super cool nightclub that they charge you that much no matter what drink you buy! So, it ended up being a pretty big night and it was a huge struggle to get up and get ourselves to the airport the next day. We did make our flight, got on board, Dan fell asleep (for a change) then there was a clunking noise, the plane stopped and after sitting on the unmoving plane for 30 minutes, we all had to get off and sit in the airport for 2.5 more hours! I guarantee you, me and Dan have never looked so terrible in our lives! So, figuring people cant think anything less of us, we made use of the time and the great lighting in the airport to pluck our eyebrows.
We got to Paris quite late and had to catch about 4 trains to get to where our hostel was (stilll looking as fresh as we were when we left Madrid!). We went to see the tower that night and wandered for hours trying to find something even remotely cheap to eat (which apparenly doesnīt exist in Paris!).
On the second day we went to Champs Elysees and then got a Paris city tour (gotta love those big red buses), but we still hadnīt quite recovered from the past few days and by the second sight on the tour we were both dead asleep in the back corner of the bus. To be honest, I cant remember what we did that night, I dont have dan here to help jog my memory, but with how tired we were that day, I dont think it was much!
On Thursday we got back on the tour bus and planned to go to Montmartre and the Latin Quarter. It turned out the bus didnīt even go to Montmartre, I had just imagined that in the blur of the tour the day before. On the way to the Latin Quarter we decided to check out the fashion museum and got lost trying to find our way back to it (I swear, cities just make so much more sense when the streets all go in the same direction! I miss NY!). After finding it and experiencing it we headed for Montmartre and went up to the Sacre Couer. We ate escargot for lunch, which was very exciting for me, but couldnīt find frogs legs anywhere!
So we hurried back to our hostel that night to watch Australia play Croatia but, would you believe, French television wasnīt showing the game! They showed the Brazil vs Japan game because im sure that was a hell of a lot more exciting than Australia getting through!! Crazy French people! We did get half a screen showing the team jumping up and down when they won a goal, but it wasnīt the same! We were planning on making Thursday our big night out in Paris but ended up sitting in the Hostel bar, all dressed up, drinking Leffe (Yuck!) and egg-smelling Stella all night (Dan was convinced it smelt like eggs, but at least it didnīt cost 12 Euros!)!
On Friday Dani left me in the hairdresser to go meet up with Nelson so me and my orange tinged hair went wandering Paris and up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which was really nice, although it took over an hour to get up there and we all know Im not the most patient person in the world! but it was great and the view from the top was amazing! That night was my first alone since Bolivia and being in the hostel, it wasnīt much fun, besides the bar, there was no communal area or anywhere where you could just relax and do postcardy things. After sitting in my room alone, sending a thousand text messages and a few emails, I went down to watch the end of the game. There were two guys from Denmark there, who Dan and I had met the night before so I ended up drinking with them until very early in the morning.
The following day I went to the Louvre, which was amazingly huge and really really overwhelming! I only spent 3 hours there because I just couldnīt look at any more! It was fantastic, but I wasnīt even looking at things when I was standing in front of them! I spent the afternoon wandering around the area and amazingly didnīt get lost. Actually, I dont think it was my own directional skills that saved me, but that Paris has so many damn metro stations that your bound to run into one of them at some point. So I reluctantly headed back to my lonely little room again and actually had the chance to meet the girls in my room. One was from Japan and one was from Brazil which was quite funny and they were both lovely! Then last night I went out with the Danish boys again to an Aussie bar. hmmm... what can I say? Imagine lots of Fosters posters, music from 2 years ago and lots of ugly drunk French people dancing on the tables! I tried to convince the boys that pubs at home were nothing like that, but I doubt theyīll ever go to an Australian themed anything again in their lives! So it was another late night for me, I got to bed at 5 and woke up at 7 to start the horrible journey back to the airport with my thousand tonnes of luggage! Okay, so I got lazy and didnīt leave til 8.30 and the train ride wasnīt half as bad as how I remembered it on our way in. The airport was crazy and it took me until about 11am to check in. I was so tired that I was asleep before the plane had even taken off and didnīt wake up until it was descending (hmm... reminds me of someone else!).
So, I am now in Barcelona, which is really nice and pretty, and its been a beautiful day, although Im not a fan of the HI hostels and Im staying in another one here. The women here are also really rude, it took me about 15 minutes to get an orange juice this afternoon! Maybe its my orange hair they dont like...
Anyway, I am totally falling asleep as I am writing this, so apologies for crapping on. Im sure you all just skip to the photos anyway! Again, I will send this entry when I have some pictures on it!
Lots of love to everyone!
Go Australia!
Ten
Apologies, I cant get the photos on again! Ill do it as soon as I can!
