Madrid, Tappas and Jamon

While I did my internship in Germany, I made friends with a girl who, like me loves to travel. When ended up spending Christmas together and then decided to do a trip together in the new-year. She loves Spain, so we decided on Madrid. First of all I should tell you that I had an extremely limited budget, so this had to be as cheap as possible…thank goodness for Raynair! (This is an airline to remember, whenever you decide to do some traveling in Europe, go visit the at www.raynair.com)

After really little planning I booked a ticket for 11€ to Dublin, here I met up with my new friend Lorena (she studies at DCU). From Dublin we caught a plane to Madrid for 20€. Madrid has a million youth hostels, but we decided on Cat’s hostel. Not a bad choice, except that we should have booked at least two weeks in advance, since this is one of the most popular hostels in town. You sleep and eat breakfast, with 24h Internet and towels included at about 14€….really cheap.

Madrid is a city, with all a city has to offer, lost of great shopping, museums, restaurants and nightlife. We tried to fit a little of all of this into our three day break away. We arrived just in time for all their winter sales and bought things at places such a Zara, Berskha and others for anything from 3€ and up. The Spaniards definitely understand the term sale or rabat as they call it

As far as food goes, you definitely have to try out tappas and jamon (you pronounce it gggamon). Tappas is equivalent to being social. Small quantities of food is ordered and shared among friends over wine or whatever you like to drink. You have to eat tappas Spanish style and make it a dinner, which of coarse have to start at 23:00! For a treat to enjoy all day any time, you can try a crossant with jamon. Jamon is something between, ham, pastrami and biltong. Well, that is my experience of it at least, but absolutely delicious!

There is so much more about Madrid to tell…but that have to wait for a another post.