We're in Madrid!

Let's start with the flight. It could have been better. We took a flight from Houston to Newark, and the same plane from Newark to Madrid. We booked the cheapest flight available to us, and, ironically, we paid the price. The quality of service and comfort was nowhere near even some of the domestic flights I've been on on Southwest and JetBlue, for instance. If I wrote out all the complaints I have, it would be one big wall of text, so I'm going to go ahead and list them neatly:

• The seats barely reclined, so you went from your seat practically leaning forward to a normal seat when you "reclined." NOT fun on a 4 hour and then a 7 hour flight.
• I couldn't watch any of the movies or shows on the screen in front of me (to distract me from the discomfort) because my headphone jack was all sorts of messed up. We had the same seats on both flights.
• At least there were outlets where I could charge my laptop and watch some shows and play games on it. BUT the one by my seat wouldn't work! Only the one at the end of the row did. Luckily that person didn't need to use it.
• The flight attendants always seemed to be in a hurry to get your problem/question/concern out of the way and weren't very polite. They basically gave me the "tough luck" talk when my headphone jack wasn't working. Sahna said she was pretty certain she saw a couple of empty seats in First Class....just sayin'

We're in Madrid! At Barajas Int'l Airport

So while the flight was not the best experience, once we landed in Madrid, it's been a lot nicer. Immigration was quick and painless for both of us (I have a Schengen visa, Sahna just has to flash her American passport...) and the information personnel were very friendly. We even talked to an Indian guy with a heavy Bengali accent who showed us to the right bus stop for the "yellow color" bus. The bus was really comfortable, and we were able to figure out where to get off due to some planning from Newark airport.

We found our way to Cat's Hostel, checked in, emailed our parents, and promptly fell asleep to catch up on the sleep lost on the flights. This turned out to bite us in the butt, cause when we walked down to the Madrid Atocha station to book our trains for Madrid-Hendaye-Bordeaux for tomorrow at 8am, we found out there was only 1 seat left...So right off the bat, we've hit bump numero uno (when in Spain...). We ended up reserving the train from Madrid-Hendaye for Friday April 22 instead. Luckily, the Hendaye-Bordeaux TER train doesn't require reservations and has multiple departures Friday evening, so we should be OK on that front (fringers crossed).

Estación de Atocha and it's indoor rainforest

There is a sliver of hope that we might be able to still catch the train to Hendaye tomorrow as a last
minute add-on, so we'll show up to the station early in the morning to try and switch our reservation to get back on track. But in the more likely scenario that this doesn't happen, we need to find a hostel that will house us for tomorrow night. Fortunately, our reservation in Bordeaux can be cancelled until 6 pm tomorrow, free of charge.

For now, all we can do is recover from the hectic travel, get some grub, and get ready for an interesting day tomorrow. Worst case scenario: we get to explore Madrid a little more than we expected!

P.S. My first meal in Madrid: A Whopper from Burger King. I'm so American...