Johnny Cash ambience

We finally made it to Lisbon and Brent is all tuckered out and curled up next to me on one of the three Ikea-themed chairs in the living room of this quaint "Black and White Hostel" in Lisbon. Johnny Cash is playing in the background. Classy. And strange. But hey, who in the world doesn't like "A Boy Named Sue"?

We took the overnight train last night from Madrid and that was quite the painful experience. I'd like to think I'm not a very high maintenance person, but trying to sleep on the train in the last row of chairs that were slightly less comfortable than airplane seats was not a very pleasant experience. It was really neat to see all the other people on the train, though. Our car seated about 40 people or so of which about 90% backpackers like us. Seemed like there were not too many Americans. Lots of UK people and others from Spanish-speaking areas. The train decided to break down at 3am, so we sat in the dark somewhere in the middle of Madrid and Lisbon. At about 4:10am, the engines started up again and we were on our way again. Mom, I have to say, I thought about Polar Express. :)

Oh, before I go any further, you may be wondering why there are no pictures up yet. Well, I haven't taken too many with my camera because it was dying and I didn't have a way to charge it since my bag (with the charger) was lost until today. (Yes, I FINALLY got my bag and almost hugged the receptionist.) So, we have been taking all of our pics on Brent's camera. Unfortunately, his computer decided not to let the camera connect to transfer our pictures. So, we haven't been able to upload any pictures yet. I take that back. Brent uploaded 14 "good pics" yesterday to a Picasa web album, so hopefully he'll post that link on his blog or post a couple pictures once he wakes up later and has time to work on his blog. We'll keep you updated.

To catch you up on the last few days, Brent and I spent a good deal of our time just walking the streets of Madrid and checking out a lot of the places I remembered from my stay a couple summers ago. I stopped by my old apartment on Fernando el Catolico which happened to only be about a 15 minute walk from one of the hostels we stayed at. For the first night, we were at Pop Hostel, which was a little sketchy but not too bad. It was a 6-bed room with a guy from Milan and 3 other girls from the states. Rather obnoxious girls, but earplugs and a face mask cure all distractions. :)

Turned out that of all the locks we brought, none of them were the correct size for the lockers we were using to lock up the bags. We had to buy a couple cheap locks at a convenience store a few doors down. No biggie--until the key that came with the lock wouldn't open the dang locker that had Brent's bag in it! We messed with the lock for a good ten minutes. We were eventually cracking up over it then the laughter passed and we moved onto the "you've got to be kidding phase". No sooner did the guy from Milan come over to see what the "commotion" was and in our broken Spanish and his broken English, he asked us what the problem was and he leaned down to help us jiggle the key in the lock. Of course, he managed to open the lock in about two seconds. Magic fingers I tell you.

We also met some other girls from Florida at Pop Hostel who had 2 weeks left of their 4-month backpacking jaunt. They gave us a few pointers for our stay in Granada and Santorini and really encouraged us to take a quick trip to Slovenia if we can. Hopefully we can squeeze that into our itinerary.

After finding out that the train to Lisbon was full for the night of the 15th, we had to scrounge around for beds for one more night in Madrid. So, we went back to the friendly staff at Pop Hostel who said they only had one bed but had another hostel 3 Metro stops away who had vacancies. We treked on over to Musas Hostel and had a very pleasant stay. The place had opened to the public just 20 days prior to out arrival and was incredibly clean and bright and cheery. Musas was also in a much better area than Pop and we were able to check out some great sights like Plaza Mayor and Palacio Real. The Plaza was as amazing as I remembered it and the Palacio was absolutely beautiful at night. The sun doesn't set until around 9:30-10:00pm so we have had lots of time to get some great shots. We also couldn't pass up Madrid without stopping by Giangrossi--the most awesome gelato place in the city. When I studied in Spain a couple years back, I spent LOTS of time here because they had free Wifi and the most awesome ambience with white leather couches and American Beauty-ish soundtrack background music. Definitely reminded me of Thermodynamics.

Moving on to where we are now....our hostel here in Lisbon is within walking distance of lots of fun things to see such as the Alfama coast and Baixa--which is the downtown area of Lisbon. Brent also has a whole list of things he wants to check out so we'll get to all of that in the next couple days before we head back to Madrid. Looks like we're finally able to check into our room, so I'm going to cut it off here. Hopefully I can do these blogs a little more regularly, now that I have my adapter. I missed a chunk of things we did in Madrid, but we'll both try to keep you all updated! (I know Brent wrote down a lot of the things I missed in the last couple days, so check out his blog too.) Nap time!