Night Train and Madrid

So the night train from Lisbon, Portugal to Madrid, Spain was not half as bad as i had expected. I was very surprised that i was able to sleep so easily. It may have been made quite easy by the fact Ole and I had a big day at the beach at Costa Da Caprica, or the fact i bored myself to sleep by getting stuck into Ole's Sudoku book. But the seats were rather comfortable and reclined enough so as to be fairly comfortable, even still, upon waking up in the morning, i still had quite a stiff neck and my back was aching a little. But what could i really complain about, i was in Madrid. We caught the underground from Charmartin to the station nearest to our hostel. The No Name City Hostel is quite nice, the girls at the reception were very friendly and helpful through our check in, they offered to look after our bags while we waited as we were a couple of hours too early to be able to go to our rooms.

Ole and I wandered around the streets near the hostel and to our surprise it was actually very close to a load of the main attractions in the city. The Royal Palace and its gardens were only a few hundred meters away and the main shopping district also, only a stones throw from the front door. I found myself a lot more comfortable being able to walk into a shop and being able to talk to the attendant as i learned a little english in Primary and High school in Adelaide, but it is what you would call 'traveller's spanish' as it is just enough to get you by but not enough to hold a good conversation. I was quite surprised to find that the Spanish and the Portuguese languages are quite different from on and other thanks to the pronunciations of some letters. But i was okay getting around Spain. I know that i will struggle quite a lot once i get to France. When we returned to the hostel to go to our rooms, i found out that it was only a new hostel and that some of the rooms were still being built, i am not sure how long it has been a hostel, but i would not suspect any longer then a month or two. It is very clean, everything is really quite spacious, secure and the common areas are set out in a way in which to promote interaction between the guests, which is very important. They are also closely affiliated with a couple other hostels in the area and between them run free walking tours of the city and tapas tours and pub crawls every night. There is definitely no pub crawl for me tonight, i am straight off to bed, as i am absolutely exhausted. Buenos Noches.