Strikes, Sleep Deprivation, and Invisible Hotels, oh my!

Tuesday - 10:30 PM

What an adventure THIS is turning out to be ;)

Still battling with jet lag, I finally got out of bed around 6:30AM with not a wink of sleep, and Deanna and I fruitlessly wandered through our neighborhood in search of a croissant. No one in Paris is open that early... the earliest cafes open at 7.

Finally got some breakfast, and managed to kindly remind our hotel staff that they were going to call us a cab at 8. No big deal, the cab shows up in under 10 minutes, and we are then treated to one of the most frightening cab rides of my life.

Frankly I'm not sure how the daily death toll during each rush hour in Paris doesn't commonly push 6 digits. No one seems to understand the concept of lanes, and motorcycles and mopeds just fly over the sidewalks at will. Seeing this is making me rather trepidatious for the drive into downtown Madrid, once I acquire my car. The combination of sleep deprivation, a new stick shift, and navigating the heart of one of Europe's busiest cities with Deanna as my navigator seems somewhat daunting at this point.

But not to get too far ahead of myself. Here we are, weaving in and out of hobbling grandmothers and mopeds, when our driver starts chatting to us about the airline strike today. He wonders how I have not heard of this, it's been all over the news! (Hint: no part of the last 36 hours had involved a TV, newspaper, or anything other than madly scrambling around tourist destinations).

Long story short, we did make it to Orly, and while there WAS a worker's strike, its only real effect was to keep us grounded on the tarmac for an hour waiting for our turn to take off as we worked through the backlog. Have I mentioned I hadn't slept in two days? Funny how much of an effect that has on your mood.

OK, so we land in Madrid and proceed to wander to the car rental area. Our car is freakin' sweet, and I am surely going to get some nice photos of it (later, once I can see straight).

Despite my playing the drive from the airport to our hotel in every way imaginable before getting here, we are absolutely lost within moments. But the harried navigation of the rat's nest maze of the streets in this city serves to get me acquainted with how to drive like a Spaniard. I'm getting rather good at it.

Then the frustrating part - I absolutely KNOW our hotel is on this block, but I have zero ability to turn my head and try to read a street sign or hotel sign while driving this area. It is what I imaging driving through Time's Square must be like. Half the time, I'm not even sure I'm not driving on a sidewalk (who knows, maybe I was). After about 2 hours of driving in circles around the same block (I FREAKING KNOW THIS PLACE IS RIGHT HERE), and calling / texting for backup to just about everyone I can think of to help Google Map the place, we finally come up with the winning strategy.

I drop Deanna off on a corner, and we (perhaps this is a risk) split up. She's going to wander the block in search of the hotel, and I'm going to drive in circles until she can tell me where I need to go.

It worked! Two or three times around the block, and Deanna waves me down. We've literally driven past our hotel about 200 times (I KNEW IT!)

Only trick is that his place has no parking, so you have to go find a random parking garage somewhere in the city and hoof it back to the hotel.

That only took us another half hour or so. By this time, it's getting on 5pm. Eventually we did find a place only a few blocks from the hotel, and while we're paying through the nose to park for the next four nights, frankly I'm just glad to be out of the car.

Quickly got acquainted with El Hotel de las Letras. Very interesting place. I imagine this is what qualifies in ancient cities as a luxury suite. We are on the top floor, there's a nightclub on the roof (I'm curious to see how loud this gets tonight... though it IS Tuesday). And we have a balcony overlooking parts of the city that is the size of our room (with a hot tub, no less).

I'll take ample photos and video of the room. At this point, we basically dropped our luggage in the room and Bee-lined for the first Tapas Bar we saw. I'm happy to report that while my Spanish isn't perfect, I am doing fine, as evidenced by this back and forth:

"Hoy esta nuestra primera dia en Espana!" (this is our first day in Spain!)

"No! Tu hablas tan perfecto!" - maybe she was hitting on me, I don't know.

So for lunch we basically had croque madame sandwiches again, but I was just so happy to actually be in a real live tapas bar I think I sorta freaked people out by how much I was grinning ;)

OK, so now it's pushing 11PM. I've had a nap for the past few hours... still fighting like hell to acclimate to this time zone. I need a shower. We're here for four nights, so that should really help get things back in order. I promise once we get fully set up here to update with some photos and stuff. It was a struggle in this place just to get the wifi to work.

Mas Despues!