Layover of Doom

If I take this option, I save $200. I'll do it.

That's what was going through my head when I booked a flight with a 15 hour layover.I can get out and view the city, I thought. I've never been to Spain, this could be a nice opportunity to see Madrid, or so my rationalization went.

My flight to Spain turned out to be almost pleasant. I sat next to a recent college graduate undergoing a standard 20-something existential "I don't really know what I want to do with my life" dilema. We chatted for a while, and I was able to get some airplane sleep. When we finally landed in Madrid, I had to overcome a bit of inertia and actually work myself up into going out to see the city. The Madrid subway system conveniently connects to the Aeropuerto, and a day subway pass is fairly cheap. After purchasing the pass, I realized that I hadn't done sufficient (or any really) research into what Madrid actually had to offer so I grabbed a subway map and figured I'd wing it.

Step one in my grand scheme of exploring Madrid involved ditching my two-and-a-half weeks worth of luggage. In my travels around Europe while I was living in Germany I had learned that regional rail stations usually had luggage lockers, so I picked a regional train station that was kind of near the airport and headed there (the airport probably also had lockers, but it didn't occur to me at the time to ask). So I made my way to the rail station with a locker area and as I was walking in I was confronted by an irate security guard who began issuing commands at me in Spanish.

Woah, woah, woah - let's just calm down and speak English.

But he didn't speak English, it turns out English fluency in Spain is not as common as English fluency in Germany and donde esta el bano only gets you so far. After a few hand gestures I determined that he wanted me to put my luggage through the large x-ray machine at the entrance that I had somehow missed. With my luggage safely stowed for the duration of my layover, I decided it was time to hit the town. Or rather, I decided it was time for me to grab a coffee and figure out where I wanted to wander around. I pulled out my subway map and decided that SOL was where the map wanted me to go.

Sol turned out to be a quite pleasant area to walk around, tourist sights had pedestrian signs directing you to them, and the city center was actually quite walkable. So I did just that - I walked, and walked... and walked. After four hours of walking around and taking pictures I decided I would try out one of those siestas that I had heard so much about. I wandered into a park like area, found a bench and made myself comfortable. I drifted in and out of consciousness until I heard a few people walking near me chatting, only they didn't continue walking. They continued chatting near enough to me that I was forced out of the sleep-like state I was in. I tried to ignore them and soon enough their chatter died out. I continued drifting back and forth between varying states of consciousness until I decided that my hunger was worth obeying. I roused myself enough to sit up and look around and it was at that point that I realized that the chatty group hadn't left, they were siesta-ing behind the bench I had claimed. In fact, as I looked around I saw quite a few others sleeping on either other benches near me or on the grass under the trees.

I had wandered out quite a bit from the SOL subway stop that marked the start of my aimless wandering tour of Madrid, so I decided to make my way back in that direction in search of food. One one of the ancillary streets of the Plaza Mayor I found some Donner. I wandered around a bit more and decided that even after the siesta I was getting pretty exhausted. I checked my watch and saw that I still had 8 hours of layover left. I thought about it and just decided to slowly make my way back to my luggage and then to the aeropuerto.