Our 12 hour flight to Europe was better than expected. We weren´t able to sleep due to time zone issues, but were able to fill our time with movies, music and newspapers. The airline´s newspaper selection included English versions of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, which gave us a chance to get ourselves fully up to speed on the crazy stuff going on in the markets back home. Do we dare put the next statement in writing? We actually - kind of, sort of - wanted to be back in the office for a few days. Not really to do work, but just to have a front row seat for all of the action. We quickly snapped out of it though, and focused our thoughts on our next stop – Madrid.
We landed before daylight so we killed a little time at the airport before venturing into the Madrid city center. Blurry-eyed, we set out to find a place to sleep for our short stay. Our first two choices were booked solid which led us to Hostal Oriente. Turns out, it wasn´t really a hostel and was a pretty nice hotel.
We didn´t have much planned for our short 2 day stay, but were able to see the majority of the main sights such as Plaza Mayor, Palacio Real, Parque Del Buen Retiro and a few museums. The weather was almost perfect with blue skies and about eighty degrees. It was a nice change from the cool South American spring. From what we saw, we were pretty impressed with Madrid. It was clean, friendly and the architecture was beautiful. Overall, a nice introduction to Europe.
Another red-eye awaits us this evening. Tomorrow morning we will be stumbling our way through Moscow trying to read their cyrillic alphabet - wish us luck.
Posted by haleyandjim 
