Madrid

In northern Spain close to the border of France was beautiful country. Very green and lots of hills and forest. Seeing it on train was very cool. Out one window you could see the coast and out the other you could see snow covered mountains. We went through Irun and San Sebastian, and i hope i can go back and check out those towns cause they looked very cool. We got into Madrid last night after 12 hours of trains from Paris and I am stoked to finally be here. My buddy and I are actually couch-surfing on my spanish teachers couches from San Diego State. When I took spanish at SDSU last spring she was my teacher. She is 23 and really cool. Her and her friend came and got us from the train station when we arrived and then it was off to the tapa bars. The first experience of tapas was great with a cana de cerveza. After that we went to the bar where she works here in Madrid. She is teaching english here and has the job at the bar as a side job. Today we have just been lounging which is nice cause its the first time ive actually got to rest a little bit. Where we are staying is about 30 min outside of the center of Madrid and I guess its a famous town because the author of Don Quixote lived here in the 1500's or whenever. Its weird to go into bars or restaurants here and see people smoking inside. I guess its something you have to get used to cause last night everyone was smoking inside the bar we were at... I might as well be smoking instead of getting all the second hand smoke.