Madrid Baby!!

Hola,

We checked out of the hotel at the airport and made our way into the centre of Madrid to the group meeting point hotel and i must say we did it with no problems at all and didnt get lost of go in the wrong direction, the metro station was about 15 minutes walk from the hotel, we had to change trains once but took around 40 minutes in all and the hotel was 10 mins walk from there easy !!!!
we went for a little walk once we had checked in but it started raining and then thunder and lighting and people you know me (lucy) it scares the shit out of me so we made our way back to the hotel.!!!!
We had our group meeting at 6pm monday evening in the lobby there is 21 people to start with good bunch of people too, we had a chat the tour leader explain whats gonna happen over next few days and then we headed out for a group meal, first stop a drink in a irish bar !!! was nice the group had a chance to chat over a drink, we were in the centre on madrid which is called sol which is where you may have seen the tents and protestors on the news mental around that area,
the meal we had was three courses made by the tour company and we just had to pay for drinks which is cool for our meal lucy had Mushrooms Casserole to start and lee had mixed paella both were massive for starters !!! main course lucy had grilled lamb chop (mmmmmmmmm) and lee had ostrich !!! i know i know mad man but to be fair it look and tasted very much like steak we didnt have a dessert we were to full just a coffee after the meal some of the group went on for more drinks but we came back to hotel glad we did they didnt get in til 2am !!! we had a 9am couch our of the city today !!!!!!
They took us around the sights for an hour and then dropped us off at Sol.. we decided to go for a coffee and then went for a tour of the Royal Palace.. bloody massive.. unfortunately they wouldn't let us take any pictures inside, shame cos some of the rooms were amazing.. god knows what the place must be worth if it went on Right Move!!!
After that we took the Metro back and has a siesta.. in the afternoon we went to the santiago bernabeu stadium - home of Real Madrid, took some pics and had some tapas..
Tonight we just had a cheap eat and bought a bottle of wine for a euro and took it back to the room (wine is so frigging cheap in Spain it's great)...
We leave at 8.30am tomorrow morning and are heading to the Orange Blossom Coast.. we are stopping off at Valencia for lunch.. only one night at Orange Blossom before we head to Barcelona Thursday for 3 days.

Over and out
Lee and Lucy xx

PS - The Metro is Madrid undergdound train system.. bloody brilliant and so easy to get around. Having some wi-fi issues at the moment so will get some pics up of Madrid as soon as we can..