Spain Tales: Room With A View

After two weeks jetting around London´s tubes and lazing on Portugal´s beaches, I finally landed in Spain today around noon, white knuckling it on the way into Barajas Airport.

As I glanced out Easyjet´s windows, suddenly last month´s news coverage of the Madrid plane crash came to life, and I could feel the spirit of the over 100 fallen holiday makers.

As is usual with Easyjet, we teetered and tottered in mid-air, but made a decent landing, like a toddler well into its weeks of walking, not quite sure, but skilled enough not to fall.

Catching the Metro from the airport was easy enough, and within the hour I was rising from the steps of Gran Via station, blinking up at the light through the hairstrands of men peppering the railings.

As I reached the top, I saw a beautiful woman standing underneath a tree, and my first thought was that she must be a prostitute. I quickly chastised myself for leaping to such a hasty conclusion, and determined that there´s nothing wrong with a perfectly beautiful woman standing underneath a perfectly normal tree outside the Gran Via.

I went to reception of the Hostal Metropol and asked the woman behind the desk when check in-time was, seemingly having forgotten the ways of the "youth traveler." She looked at me with a snicker in her eye, and said, "When you get here." She gave me my key to my private room, and I had my second shower of the day.