The first major city I have now visited on my weekend travels around Spain, and what a place to begin. It's absolutely massive!
I got there by train Saturday evening around 8pm, then had to get the metro to the place where Fran and Alex live - a district called Arguelles. The metro confused me so much I had to ask people where to go. Luckily, both the people I asked were from America, and so they spoke English. I do feel confident at speaking Spanish over here now, but if I'd have got confused and ended up on the other side of Madrid, it would not be a very good start...The metro only takes a few minutes so I had to say goodbye to my new friends pretty soon.
When I arrived at Arguelles I was met by Joe, who lives close by, and so we went to Fran and Alex's flat, where Louiseanne was also there.
After a quick stop to a Carrefour Express to get some Vodka, Redbull and a pizza, we were getting ready and drinking before we knew it. Little did I know, we were going to Cueca. Cueca is like gay capital of Madrid. Similar to Canal Street of Manchester, except a much larger area. I kind of realised this was a gay area in the queue to the first bar that we went to - Liquid (yes that's right you Oldhamers - Liquid is gay). It was full of camp-as-you-like men. The place was, unusually for Madrid, free entry, but the drinks were, as expected, quite pricey. We're talking about 9 Euros for a Vodka-RedBull.
After a few drinks in Liquid we moved on to somewhere else, I can't remember the name of the place but there was a drag act on. We were there about 5 minutes, so it's not really worth mentioning. Here's a picture for you that I took anyway.
After the drag place, we went to a nightclub in Madrid called 'Cool'. Gay as you like. It cost, I think, 10 or 20 euros to get in (can't actually remember), and with that you get a free drink of whatever you like. As always with Spain, you get a lot of alcohol in your drink, but I've learned that if you give the barman a cheeky look, he'll put in a bit more for you, especially if he's gay. Inside the club, literally 95% of the people were guys, and i'd say 95% of them were gay by first impressions. Not that I have anything against gay people, but it was pretty obvious.
Dancing on several stages were what the Spanish call 'Gogo's'. Tall, extremely muscular men wearing nothing but leather, and hardly any of it at that. There were also girls dancing on stages too, also in leather, and even a transvestite at one point - well at least I thought it was a transvestite - his face looked like a mans, but he had no tits.
The music they played at these clubs was decent though - much better music than whats played at nightclub in Manchester or Leeds in my opinion. Proper house music.
The night finished when the club closed at 7am, so we walked back to Fran and Alex's apartment, had about 3 hours sleep, and then I had to be up to catch my train back to Valdepenas. All in all, a top night.
More travel blogs to come soon! Although I think I'm going to Madrid again in a couple of weeks - this time to see the city itself...another night out is not out of the question though...
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