A Crappy Paella To Add To My Crappy Day

Tonight, Paul decided we should try a paella restaurant recommended on Chowhound, an online food critiquing website.  The recommendations on this site had worked well for us in New York when we were searching for good, affordable food, so we were optimistic.  As you can see by the title of this blog post, I was NOT impressed…. (more…)

Paranoid and Feeling Unsafe in Madrid

Being our last day in Madrid, we set out today to see the last major sight we haven’t visited - the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).  Our morning was off to a late start since we had to move to our new dorm room for this evening (which thankfully will be the last night we stay in this dreadful hostel) and we needed to find somewhere with Internet so that Paul could do some work since the guy at reception needed us to vacate the common areas so that he could do the “cleaning” (honestly I seem to see the exact same messes when we return in the afternoon so I don’t think they clean at all).  (more…)

Yay! Found Some Good Tapas!

Ok, finally, we’ve found some food that made us go wow!  (more…)

Visit to Real Madrid’s Home Turf

Since our schedule today probably won’t time out right for us to catch a football game (soccer in North America), we decided to do a tour of Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.  It was either tour this stadium or the one for Manchester United, and the Santiago Bernabeau Stadium tour got better reviews online so we decided to just go for it.

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Dinner Experience #1 in Madrid

Tonight we tried to find some good tapas, but after wandering around 3 blocks, we decided we would give up trying to understand tapas menus/bars and just picked a place that had a “menu del dia” that was translated into English and looked pretty decent.  (more…)

Spain Is Prettier Than Portugal But Not As Friendly…

After a day of wandering around in Madrid, we’ve come to the conclusion that Madrid is definitely beautiful and a more well-kept city than Lisbon or Porto, but the people here seem cold, snobby, and completely unwilling to help if you don’t speak Spanish!  Even the girl at the McDonald’s counter wouldn’t acknowledge my attempt to order a Quarter Pounder with cheese until I made a mangled attempt to pronounce it in Spanish (which FYI is Cuarto di Libra) and I ended up eating my McNuggets with BBQ sauce because I had no clue how to say Sweet-And-Sour in Spanish (editor’s note: Maybe she’s originally from France?)

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Barbieri Hostel in Madrid – Who The Hell Gave This Place Good Reviews?!?!

At the beginning of our planning, we used hostels.com to book four hostels – one in Lisbon, one in Porto, one in Madrid, and one in Barcelona – we based our decisions on which hostel had the best reviews on this website.  While looking into Montpellier France, we realized that two people who can share one bed can book a budget hotel room for basically the same price as a hostel since hostels always charge per person/per bed!  Up until now, the hostels have been pretty awesome and we haven’t regretted our oversight on this, but Barbieri Hostel is likely going to change this and make us avoid hostels in the future! (more…)

French, Italian, German, and Spanish Phrases

A traveler’s cheat sheet on how to say the basics and ask important questions in  French, Italian, German, and Spanish

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