Madrid

After landing in Madrid, I met up with Howard at the airport at a little known bar/restaurant in the airport called ROBOT (it was so little known that the place was in a run-down portion of the airport, near new construction, and was being shut down and replaced, making it a poor meeting up point). We then took the Madrid Metro to our Hotel, near Gran Via and Callao. Our hotel is decent, but unfortunately does not have internet access (thus, we´ve been in cafes and there are no picture uploads).

Yesterday, we walked around Madrid to a Retiro Park. There were some absolutely amazing views and pictures, which I hope to share in the next couple days. I´ll comment then...

Last night we went to dinner at a Jewish restaurant called La Escudilla (www.laescudilla.com). It was a true Sefaradi restaurant (in Sefarad, no less), I had the lamb with prunes and almonds, which was quite good. I don´t recall what Howard had, but it too looked good. It was interesting to note that we got to the restaurant at roughly 10pm and were the first ones there. The sun goes down at roughly 9:30pm here, and people regularly eat dinner up until midnight, then go out afterwards (some clubs first open at 2 or 4am). Crazy place...

Today, we walked around to several locations, including an Egyptian temple that was transported over to Spain as a thank you for Spanish help in Aswan excavation. It was pretty neat. Additionally, we went to this old castle, but were not allowed in (most museums are closed on Mondays). We walked around the town for nearly the whole day, looking for internet cafes and exploring the locales. For lunch we went to an Israeli-owned Felafel bar (vegetarian) called Maoz www.maozveg.com). Quite good.

We are both pretty excited to be waking up at 6am tomorrow to take a train at 8:30 to Algeceiras (southern Spain) on our way to the boat that will take us across the mediteranean sea to Morocco later tomorrow evening. By 2am, we will be in Fez, Morocco...

Keep in touch...