GOODBYE TO MY SPANISH CONTIKI-ERS

WEATHER: The sun is out – all day – woo hoo

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY:  Pub crawl after final dinner

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Saying good-bye to my Contiki Husbands

BUYS OF THE DAY:  Pub crawl at 20EUR and all you could drink for 90 minutes at the first bar

WORD OF THE DAY: - See you on Facebook

Day song – Ave Maria by David Bisbal

Wake-up song – Lazy Song by Bruno Mars

Back up day song chosen by our Portuguese driver Jose – La Bomba by Azul Azul

It pretty much was a driving day for our last day of tour.  We left Seville at 8.30am and pushed through to our first stop after 3 hours.  From there we pushed another 1.5 hours to get back into Madrid at 1.30pm.  We had free time here till 4.45pm when we were collected and taken to the hotel.  After lunch we just walked around the city for a while and then I sat in one of the many parks and just read my book for an hour or so.  Sometimes you just need to rest the weary feet.

We met again at 7.45pm for the group that were doing the optional dinner to catch the metro into the city.  The hotel is only 2 stops, so we are in a pretty good location and the metro station is literally a 4 minute walk from the hotel.  The unfortunate thing is that it just started to rain before we left the hotel, so we waited 15 minutes, and it didn’t really ease, so we just had to make a dash for the metro and all our hair went frizzy, but the make-up seemed to survive okay! 

Getting into Sol, the rain had eased and we walked another 10 minutes to get us to our restaurant.  I have to say the food was delicious!  We had tapas for starters and we pretty much could have just had that and been done with the meal.  We had cooked capsicum, tempura onion, calamari and chorizo and then the main was the best steak I have ever tasted, I am not sure if it has something to do with that I haven’t  had a steak since leaving home 68 days ago, but boy it was good.  I would have preferred to have had it cooked a little more, but I ate it all the same and it was tasty!!

Due to the rain delay, we were late for the pub crawl.  But with 2 hours all you can drink beer and sangria at the first bar, I am sure we made up for lost time.  It was a professional pub crawl run by Madcat’s Pub-crawl and Elyde was great moving us between the 3 bars.  At 11pm, we moved to the second bar, at 1am we moved to the last bar and then at 3am Andrew, Rosa and I decided to cut our losses and headed home.  A lot of the crew had flights to catch today, with majority of them between 10am and 1pm.  So if I left at 3am, I wonder how they all pulled up for their flights this morning.  There are a handful of us staying an extra night in Madrid before flying out, and I am lucky I have the luxury to be able to do that. 

I have to get my bag packed for airline travel again.  I need to post a package home, but as it is Sunday the post office is not open today, so I am going to have to carry some extra weight till Athens and then post it from there.  I should have been more organized damn it.  I am going British Airways via London, so hopefully I won’t get any excess baggage charges.  Have I mentioned this is the bit I hate and stress about is my luggage.  If I could ditch one bag, I would.

So another tour done and dusted.  I will miss my Contiki Husbands, you guys were awesome and thanks for looking after me those few nights out.  Platha May-or will just not be the same without you!  Also made a bunch of new friends and hope to catch up with some of you again back in Oz and also in London.  I am lucky there are another 5 gals from this tour doing my Contiki Greek Islands, so we will be a posse before the tour has even started. 

A special mention to Rach our Tour Manager.  I have said this before, but I don’t think people realize how much work goes on behind the scenes on the Contiki tours, this also includes the driver.  They are forever making phone calls, running around getting maps, getting directions on how to walk to places, special meal requests, accommodating clients, always a smile on the dial, even when things get a little challenging – so this is a MASSIVE THANK-YOU to you and all the work that you have done for us.  You are one in a million Rach and I hope that we will get to see each other again soon.  PS:  I told you I wouldn’t mention the ear kiss on the blog xx

So this is farewell Spain and also Madrid.  Off to Greece and Athens tomorrow to get some Greek Island action and I think the main thing I am looking forward to is 3x3 night stays – so no packing bags each day.  I hope the sun will be shining and my Contiki cough thinks about leaving soon. xx

CONTIKI SPANISH SPREE 2011 – in no particular order………

Karen, Lillian and Stacy – USA

Ian – New Zealand

David – USA

Daniela and Bianca – USA

Cameron – USA

Bree – Australia

Russell – USA

Lisa and Dee – Australia

Amy and Matt – USA

Joe and Tim – USA

David – Canada

Raoul – Australia

Jean – USA

E and Ash – Canada

Anastasia – Canada

Hannah – USA

Priya – Australia

Leelah – USA

Cameron – Australia

Paul – Australia

Peter – UK aka Australia

Joanna – USA

Dominique – Canada

Kristina – Australia

Mark – Canada

Andrew – Australia

Andrew – USA

Nick, Rosa and Miguel – Australia

Jess – Australia

Kaitlin – Australia

Kylie and Dylan – Australia

Cherri – USA

Stephen – Canada

Alyce – Australia