We walked into our 2 star Espana Hotel, admired the historic entrance way and lobby, checked in, then headed off to our fourth floor, back-of-the-hotel room. Honestly, the phrase “holly crap” does not quite cover my initial reaction as I pushed open our door. The building was built in the eighteen hundreds apparently, and it looks like only minor renovations had been done since. Our beds were actually cots, the window would not lock and peered out over another dark alley and local apartments, the decor was from absolutely no later then the 1970’s, our TV was bolted to the ceiling with no remote control and our door had no dead bolt of any sorts. Whew. Being unhappy with the room I went down to ask the hotel clerk if there were any rooms on the front-side of the hotel we could move to, so we could enjoy being on the “street” side instead of the back. There were none, but I was instructed to inquire the following day and he put my name on a list before I headed back to the room feeling uneasy in this unfamiliar place.

Before going to sleep we decided to see if we could understand anything on the TV. CNN was the only English channel so we stopped to watch for few minutes. Not two minutes after we stopped at that channel, I watched in disbelief as the CNN reporter stated that two hours prior ETA (a Basque terrorist group in Spain, “Basque Homeland and Freedom”) had blown up parking garage at the airport in Madrid, Spain and the Spanish government now declared the permanent cease-fire which had start several months earlier was now over. Crap. I was starting to wonder what exactly we got ourselves into here. I needed to shut the TV off now, because this bad news was only making be nervous… time to get some sleep now, tomorrow was a new day. Unfortunately that “new day” came earlier than I hoped, our sleep was disturbed several times that night by groups of guys shouting in Spanish, banging on doors and walking around the echoing hallways of the hotel. The funny thing about this was that since I didn’t speak Spanish, my imagination from watching CNN was starting to get the best of me. “Oh crap, are they ETA guys banging on doors looking for tourist hostages or are they just a bunch of locals asking their friend Bob if he wants to go out and get a beer?” haha. I decided at this point that I wanted to learn to speak Spanish 😉

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