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Stranded in Madrid, Spain

Jane de Teliga has an accidental holiday in Madrid (without speaking the language).

So here I am stranded in the Madrid airport on my way back from London. The whole of Europe is closed down because of the volcanic ash spewing from an erupting Icelandic volcano, with the unpronounceable name of Eyjafjallajokull. I know no one in Madrid, have no guidebooks and have run out of charge on the phone using the Internet.

There are a couple of thousand people in the airport and no flights out. Mmmm what to do? Rather than wait in queues reputed to be up to 5 hours long, I decide to bail out and find a hotel near the airport. The nearest town is Barajas I discover. So, off I go, on the underground train. This is the first thing I discover about Madrid. The Underground is brilliant, brand, clean as a pin and easy to understand.

I trundle up the empty street in Barajas and beg the Best Western Villa de Barajas to give me a room. At first, they say they’re booked out but I must look desperate as they relent and give me one of their best rooms at a single rate. So, this unlikely hotel becomes my saviour for next three days, despite valiant attempts on my part to fly elsewhere.

I walk across the road to a small family restaurant. I explain by sign language and bits of Italian that I am stranded and hungry. There in the Restaurante Florentino Camapinillas, I am given a gift of a plate of delicious jamon iberico the wonderful oily ham from black pig that is a staple of Spanish food, then spicy meatballs arrive, followed by the owner taking me to the kitchen to choose some delicious flaky biscuits coated with sugar, another gift, and the bill total comes to 8 euros.

By now, I’m feeling a bit tearful and a bit Blanche Dubois (“I have always relied on the kindness of strangers”). I discover another strandee; a Swiss girl from Mozambique who has just been in Haiti doing relief work after the earthquake. Later on, we both find an Englishwoman who has detoured from Indonesia, and suddenly I have a posse. We eat that night in another restaurant up the road with surprisingly good food, Vina de Nerea and it’s starting to feel like a home.

After another abortive trip to the airport, the next day, I return to the hotel, dump my bags and hop back onto the train. I take a trip to the Prado, one of the great art galleries of the world and stare for some time at the sumptuous portrait of a little princess surrounded by courtiers by Velasquez. Eight euros again well spent. I wander after into the Botanic gardens next door on a lovely warm spring day for a whole 2.50 euros. There I marvel at an extraordinary display of the craziest tulips I have ever seen, with ridiculously named varieties like Kung Fu.

The next day off I go on the train again, and visit the big department store El Corte Ingles. I always find a department store visit in any city in the world somehow gives me my bearings. Not this one though – which looks like something sad out of the 1970s.

Instead, I wander down to the park in front of a grand Palace and accost a girl in a smart red jacket and jeans walking her dog, who tells me where to go for the chicest shopping. Off on the magic Madrid Underground again, I come up for air and wander past the usual suspects -Tiffany and Louis Vuitton – until I come to an interesting shopping street called Claudio Coello.
There I find Isolee, Madrid’s answer to the cult Paris store Colette. A cool little mini emporium that’s part gift shop, café, delicatessen, bookshop and fashion and beauty store; it’s the first store I see in Madrid that is worth a visit.

The next day after hours at the railway station, I manage to get rail tickets to Paris on the overnight train. I hear traveller’s tales of people hiring taxis to take then from Madrid to Copenhagen for 4 thousand euros. It’s all going swimmingly, until we hit Hendaye on the French border, where we discover there are no trains, due to the strike, and we have to sleep in an old railway carriage at the side of the station. It’s starting to feel like some old wartime movie.

The trip to Paris next morning is fraught, with an overcrowded train and irate French passengers, demanding priority. I get to Paris, sleep on my sister’s couch and ring Iberia after discovering how much the Eurostar is now charging for tickets to London. “Sure,” says the nice woman on the phone, “we can fly you to London on you original ticket.” And then she mentions that it’s via Madrid! So back I fly to Madrid (Is it Ground Hog Day?) and finally on to London. What should have taken an hour and a half has now taken five days. A tale – but all true.

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