Today, we arrived around noon at the Madrid airport. Only Yilinn slept much at all on the plane (everyone else got ~1.5 hours or less, so we were pretty dead/out of it).
We took the train to Madrid Chamartin train station, and promptly walked 15 minutes to luggage storage that didn’t exist (thanks Benton 🤡). We ended up Ubering downtown (which was super cheap), and stored our luggage in a locker. (Benton made sure to read the code out loud, so that Allan could respond with “Don’t say the code, we have like ten grand worth of laptops in those lockers”… oops). Fortunately, no one ended up hearing/stealing our laptops.
We walked to a tacos place that Allan knew from the last time he was in Madrid (Takos Al Pastor). Tacos were tasty (when Allan ordered, the cashier interpreted his name as Allah), and we had a bit of time to kill before our train. We went to a rooftop bar near central Madrid (Azotea del Círculo). Views were nice; we got to lay down and drink.
After drinks, it was time to take the Metro to Madrid Chamartin (the metro was slow and felt almost like we were riding in a large toy train), and then get on a train to Bilbao.
The train arrived around 10:30pm, and everyone fell asleep during a good chunk of that train ride (minus Yilinn). David, who decided not to take off on Friday (and also neglected to look at the trip itinerary pre-arrival in Madrid 🤡), was stuck taking a call in the train near the bathroom. To paraphrase: “Every time we went through a tunnel I lost signal and hoped that I didn’t have to speak.” Allan and Benton also took a quick interview/survey about how we got to the train.
Memorable things/highlights of day:
Benton: Madrid’s train felt like children’s toys
Yilinn: The buses look like legos/some are tiny.
Daidai: Taking call on subway (lost signal in every tunnel) + a super dry bocadillo
Allan: We failed to store luggage efficiently, and it was generally a funny experience.
