En-route to Portugal we stopped of in Madrid for about 6 hours... to say Madrid left little to be desired would be an understatement... granted we just came from the hype of LaTomatina and the festival.. also a beach side town but I found Madrid to be rather boring and dare I say... just like most other European cities... yep snap i said it.. after awhile the cities, besides a certain few have blurred into one... I realise how spoilt and possibly uneducated that makes me sound but after seeing the Famillia and Dom churches in Barcelona and Koln no church compares and after seeing the Trevi fountain in Rome no fountains compare... it is easy to become spoilt in Europe because you are exposed every day to amazing things... If you hadnt been to many european cities then i am sure you would have a very different opinion of Madrid and also if you perhaps spent a night and sampled the night life (which is meant to be fantastic) then sure Madrid may live up to expectations but on our sleep deprived, nutritional food deprived and for myself quite ill, stoppover we found madrid to just be a nice simple European city that didnt stand out the way Berlin, Prague or Barcelona did...

Anyway enough of my rant we hopped off the train and headed out and about from the train station to explore.. We were pointed in the direction of the main part of the city... We wandered out of the station walked along the main stripped, had a look at the shops and the monuments and of course the many street performers and then we were bored... all this was about 2 hours worth of entertainment.. we grabbed a bite to eat and kept trying to be enthused about the idea of being in Madrid but it just didnt impress us enough so we went to starbucks where we sat for a couple of hours and picked on each other in different languages using Sarahs phrase book. I called sarah a lesbica which is portuguese for Lesbian and she called me a homosexuell which if you hadnt already figured it out is Homosexual in German.. we had a rather cultural experience in Madrid as you can see...

After Starbucks we headed back to the train station for our overnight train to Lisbon in Portugal.. we stopped at a few shops along the way and that was about it...

Again maybe if we spent some proper time in Madrid we would see more and appreciate it more then we did but it didnt have that immediate effect the Brugge in Belgium and Berlin in Germany had for me... its nice but thats about it... Next stop sleeper train to Lisbon