Life Lesson #24 - Life is Like a Box of Dominos

Today, at 3:00am, I snuck through three locked doors into an enormous dorm in a Spanish hostel without checking in, picked an empty bed, and slept there.

It all started when we forgot to check which gate our Ryanair flight to Madrid was leaving from. At most airports you'd be fine, but at Stansted they have a shuttle train system followed by one-way escalators to ensure that idiots like us are screwed.

Eventually we figure out how to call security, who send a jolly old guy that takes us through a whole bunch of security doors on to a bus, then drives us across the Tarmac to the correct gate.

Needn't have rushed. Apparently there were flights backed up at Madrid, and after the plane was loaded, they kept us grounded for two hours.

Which meant we landed after midnight, missed the last bus, and had to negotiate the Madridian (is that what you call it?) subway system across three lines to our station. We made it in the nick of time before their 2am shutdown.

Have you ever heard of a hostel with no external signage? I hadn't, until last night, anyway. That's why we were wandering around downtown Madrid for nearly an hour, exclaiming "but it should be right here!" every few steps.

Eventually we realized it was an unsignposted part of a dark apartment building, and that reception had closed at midnight. luckily for us, 5 minutes layer two beautiful Serbian girls arrived home, each carrying a red rose from her date, and helped us inside.

Apparently everyone, including the staff, had just gone to a bar down the road. We waited in the kitchen for what felt like an age, then decided just to nick two empty beds and fess up in the morning.

I was so tired I didn't even wake when everyone got home from the bar.

 

The inside of our very small, very strange hostel.