se habla espanol.... NO!

I arrived in Madrid yesterday morning, having hardly slept a wink on the plane. The Madrid airport was thankfully quite easy to navigate, and I found the customs officials to be friendly (flirtatious, even!), which is quite a difference from our Department of Homeland Security. After having received my luggage, and taking 300 Euros from the cajero automatico, an equivalent of 418 US dollars (ouch!), I took the Metro to the Atocha train station. Again, extremely easy to navigate and very clean! The only train that was available to Valencia was the omni, so it took 6 hours, and I wondered to myself why I didn't book a flight all the way to Valencia. After several hours of sitting on my arse, I finally met up with Suta, Young and my dear old dad. We drove about an hour to the villa in Javea, which indeed has fabulous views overlooking the Mediterranean.

Which brings me to my main observation since arriving here. Apparently, the Spanish don't really speak Spanish among themselves. It's either Catalan or whatever language they speak in Valencia. Here in Javea, people have spray-painted over all the street signs, re-writing the names in the local language. So Javea is Xabia, and I'm finding that I have a lot of learning to do! More on this topic during my next post! Ciao for now!