Arctic Monkeys and a more rubbish-strewn Madrid

Rubbish-strewn because we were there mid bin man strike. Actually it had already been going on for over a week, so if you can imagine how much waste a city produces in a week , thats what was covering the streets of Madrid. To be fair it would have been worse, but apparently people had started going into the streets and burning it all. I'm sure a far safer option...

Anyway having arrived early afternoon, our first mission was to collect Amanda and locate the hostel. Having been to Madrid before and being the only big city person from our group meant that of course I was left in charge of navigating the metro and directions. After some slight confusion caused by there being two Atoche metro stations and neither us nor Amanda having any idea where she was, we managed to track her down and find the hostel. Once we'd organised ourselves and recuperated, we headed out to meet a couple of Amanda's friends at the Palacio de Deportes and start queuing to get into the concert. Unfortunately it seemed that a few other people had already arrived early, I've seen some pretty big queues in my life but this was definitely one of the biggest. We, true Brits (and Irish) that we are, dutifully sloped off to the back and took our place, waiting for the doors to open. But as soon as this happened, all hell broke loose and everyone suddenly seemed to be running towards the entrance. So we made a dash for it and, all sense of fairness forgotten, somehow ended up right at the front. Can't say that I have any regrets, as it meant we got the best seats in our section. The concert itself was incredible, having seen the Arctic Monkeys a few years ago I had high expectations and they didn't disappoint, there was such a great atmosphere as well.

After the concert we headed back into the centre to have a very late dinner and find somewhere to go for drinks. After wandering around a bit, typically we ended up in an Irish pub and pretty much stayed there. The temperature in Madrid was easily a few degrees colder than in Granada so no one was that keen to spend too much time walking around. Afterwards Ash and I went on to a couple more bars whilst the others went back to the hostel. At this point it was getting pretty late so most places were shutting up, but we managed to get in a couple more drinks and met up with Ben briefly before calling it a night. Luckily, having spent a summer in Madrid, Ash knew her way around so we weren't reliant on my terrible sense of direction or we'd probably still be hopelessly lost.