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…)

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…)

First Time Flying Ryanair

Today we took our “free” flight to Madrid and now we can see how Ryanair manages to make a profit while charging such outstandingly low fares.  If you read the first related blog about our $0.00 fare (http://www.monkeyandrooster.com/2009/02/12/000-airfare), you might recall there was no charge for the flight itself, but 10 euros each for taxes and fees, and another 5 euros each for a passenger fee. (more…)

Portuguese Tarts @ Pasties de Belem – My New Favourite Treat

We bumped into Uwe at breakfast today and found out that we were heading in the same direction - the district of Belem to check out the Jeronimos Monastery – so we traveled together again.  We went to catch the tram, but it turned out the tram to Belem was not running today so a tram driver told us we should catch bus #40 across the Plaza.

After waiting 25 minutes, we became frustrated with the bus system and decided to share a cab with another random person Paul met at the bus stop who was also going to the Monastery.  We never learned his name but he told us he’s a history professor from a college in Chicago, here on his sabbatical and he gave us a few good tips on places in the world he has traveled to. (more…)

Supermarket Surprise!

Yesterday I decided to stop by the supermarket for the first time and I learned that you can buy drinks and stuff for very cheap in Portugal!  We thought that the restaurant prices here were very reasonable with most pop/water being only 1 Euro,  lunch specials for 5 Euros, and dinner entrees for around 8 Euros, but after going to the supermarket here I’ve learned that the cost of food is generally quite low in Portugal.  (more…)

Daytrip to Sintra

Today with our new friend Uwe from Germany, whom we met at the hostel, we decided to take a train and daytrip to Sintra (about 45 min from Lisbon) because several other guests at the hostel said Sintra is a must-do day trip.  We’ve pretty much decided to rely on other people’s recommendations for what to see/do so far because we came to Europe without planning our activities so that we could have a flexible schedule.  Considering how enjoyable this daytrip was, we might want to reconsider using guidebooks and any planning in general…. (more…)