Reunited in Madrid (1)

After a day of being at work when all I wanted to do was go to Madrid and see Mum and Dad, finally the time came.  I set off from La Carolina on my SAMAR bus, and tried (unsuccessfully) to doze off.

As we were nearing Madrid, I noticed the bus had pulled off into some kind of service lane.  This worried me, since we'd already had our comfort stop.  The bus driver then stopped the bus at a petrol station, announced something that I didn't understand, and got off the bus.  Luckily, Spanish people like to talk, so they very loudly repeated what was going on several times, and I worked out what was going on without having to ask anyone: the bus was leaking oil.

After 10 minutes or so, the bus driver came back, announced that we had to wait about 20 minutes for someone to bring us oil for the bus, and then disappeared again.

Anyway, I guess the Spanish 20 minutes is different to the NZ 20 minutes, as we were there for about an hour and forty minutes (without updates about what was going on).  I mean, seriously, guys.  We came from Andalucía, and Jaén at that: world capital of (olive) oil!  Surely someone had some in their bag that we could have used?!

Bloody oil!

So, it was a rather frustrated and hungry me who got to meet up with my parents two hours later than planned. Then again, we'd already been waiting a year and three months.  What's a couple of hours?!  Anyway, definitely a cool moment when I caught sight of them in the metro.  And they even recognised me with my new haircut.  ;p  Certainly didn't feel like we'd been apart for so long.

Everyone was pretty hungry so, after settling into the apartment hotel, we headed off in search of a decent feed.  We ended up finding a pretty cool little place in the Cava Baja (more about places we ate in another, later, post).  Had some tapas there, one of which was tortilla española, aka Spanish omelette.  Two very important cultural experiences already taken care of!

Tortilla española

Little did we know that there was a third one coming: lack of sleep due to the Spanish habit of partying 'all day... all night.'  The apartment hotel was just off Gran Via, and right opposite a sex shop... Dad already didn't have much of a chance of a good sleep, being on the couch since they hadn't set up the extra bed.  However, we were also treated to a night of the chatter of crowds of people, firecrackers being let off and, when that all finally stopped, construction workers.