June 16

What's the address of our hostel?
After a fairly good nights sleep on our overnight train to Madrid- where we bunked with a girl from Atlanta and a non-English speaking Asian lady- we attempted to find our hostel for roughly THREE hours- all walking WITH our backpacks on. Needless to say we were happy to find our hostel, although disappointed to learn we would be staying in two different dorm rooms. As I write this before bed I´ve yet to discover the age, sex, or nationality of the 4 other people sharing our room. After a minimal amount of freshening up we went to a nearby Starbucks I spotted on our hostel search. Syd and I sank into the plush couches for awhile as I slowly sipped my Frappaccino. We discussed our mission for the day: find the tourist office and free internet. We accomplished both goals but free internet came with a price- a 2 mile walk and only 25 minutes of computer time on a slow computer. We´ll find a better solution tomorrow. Dinner was from a dingy Supermarket- "Dia"- apples and yogurt, but eaten in the VERY cozy basement lounge of the Starbucks. Even a hostel shower felt wonderful tonight before bed.