Tapas on tour (29th August)

So it's a relatively lazy morning, with the main task appearing to be avoiding the Busabout cough (which seems to have struck down about 20% of the travellers, including 2 in our room). Ben and Ashly suggest walk to a 'medieval street' that they read about in Lonely Planet. Finding it turns out to be a bit of a mission because even when we have walked all the way along it, we aren't convinced we have found it! Lonely Planet is a random book -and we've been increasingly disappointed in their recommendations, for example the food places are apparently no better than others in the area -but become FAR more busy because of the mention in the book. We look up tickets for the Real Madrid football game that's on in town tonight, but they have now all been allocated since we last looked them up. It's a bit of a shame -but I guess if we'd been dead set on going we'd have just paid the 40 euro pp when we first saw them! Anyone from my football (aka soccer) team reading this must think that Mike is insane for not going... but AFL's a much better live sport after all! We hook up with a tapas tour that has been organised through the hostel and start at 2:30pm. Tapas are a Spanish food phenomenon that have now been replicated around the world. The origin is apparently from when the Spanish King's medical advisor knew he couldn't get the King to give up alcohol, so instructed him to eat food while he drank to reduce the effects. The King, wanting his people to also be healthy, passed a law that any alcoholic drink purchased must be served with a portion of food. So the 9 of us make our way around 4 bars, having a drink and a piece of finger food at each venue -not a bad way to pass a few hours really! One of the highlights of the tour was talking to a couple of very sweet, but very green American travellers from Florida. Apparently they forgot to bring towels on their trip, so for the last 2 weeks have been drying themselves with toilet paper. When Ashly asked why they didn't just buy new towels over here, they had a surprised expression and said "we never thought of that!". Sorry Dee -puts Americans in a bit of bad light. We later have kebaps for dinner (the place is PACKED with people watching the Real Madrid game) and then have some drinks back at the hostel with Ben and Ashly. This is a little bit bad ass of us as drinks are not allowed in the rooms... but by this point we're kinda over the hostel rules and do it as form of protest. One power point in the 6 person room, air co controlled by reception, one croissant for breakfast, world's worst Wifi connection, no mirrors in the room, no hooks in the 3 seconds per push showers and a stealing laundry made it low on our list of hostels.