A necessary tapas tour

We left Barcelona for Madrid on a high speed train. The train ride was
a little over 3 hours and very uneventful. Upon our arrival we took
the metro to our first hostel here, an experience all of its own. The
first part of the story was trying to locate the hostel, there is no
outdoor sign or really any sign at all for the place. When another
friendly traveler saw us obiviously struggling to find the place he
guided us in the right direction, but when we entered what we thought
was the right building we immediately thought this was too nice to be
our hostel. We buzzed at the door to make sure we were in the correct
location and the man told us the hostal was on the first floor
(buildings start at 0 in Europe). When we got up to the actual hostal
the guy asked us to pay including asking Luke to give him is pin. Luke refused and typed it in himself. Then he began explaining the rules in a
cramped hallway. "There are 2 bathrooms, no showers after midnight.
Public telephone, no calls after midnight. Coffee machince around the
corner, 24 hours. Here are the keys, pointy key room key. Key with
white door to the floor. Up and to the left, up and to the left.
Downstairs key with gap. Turn to the right. Ok. Here is your room.
This bed, this bed, this bed, and this bed. And 2 English boys. Ok. "
We were left with our chins on the ground in awe of the situation. The
so-called "English boys" looked at us and laughed saying "we're
scotish by the way, that guy has insisted on calling us English all
week." They then proceeded to tell us how everyone is in amazment of
the hostal when you first get there and that it looks much better
online. Luke described it as an orphange but worse. This was
definitely the worst place we have stayed on the trip. The room was
jammed with seven beds, with about 4 inches between the beds. To get
to the beds in the corner you would have to climb over people. While
sleeping if you rolled at all you could roll on top of the person next
to you which happened to Luke rolling onto a stranger. The two bathrooms were like a regular house bathroom with a
tub/ shower combo, not ideal for a hostel housing around 40 people.
Our room had a balcony right next to the street, which made sleeping
very tough with cars cruising down the street in the middle of the
night, and what seemed like an all night party takig place. We only
had to stay there one night though and we survived.

Aside from the shady accomendations we had a good first day in Madrid.
We walked around the city stopping at the plaza del sol and the plaza
mayor. Both were hopping with tourists and españoles, and made Madrid
seem like a large metropolis. Between both of the plazas we stopped at
the famous chocolateria San gines for some chocolate con churros.
These were amazingly delicious and enjoyable to consume. We ordered a
large plate of churros for four which was accompanied by four coffee
cups of warm liquid chocolate dipping sauce. As we devoured the
churros con chocolate we decided to walk to the national palace. Since
we did not want to return to our hostal until completely necessary, we
began a tapas tour through Madrid after walking around the palace, stopping at multiple resturants and
ordering a few tapas and drinks at each while making our way back to
the hostal. We tried the speciality at each place including the
Spanish tortilla, some ham specialities including ham with melon and a
ham and bacon omlette combo, and one of our favorites from the trip,
patatas bravas which are potato chunks with a spicy tomato sauce on
them. At our final tapas place very close to the hostal we even
ordered a pitcher of sangria, which was described to us as the Spanish
equivilant to jungle juice meant to really get the party started. This
helped us to get as much sleep as possible in the "orphanage but
worse" accomendations. After a minimal amount of rest, we checked out
in the early morning excited to find our next hostal with hope for
something better.