Random Roadtrip to Toledo and Madrid!

Ciao!!

So, I received an email on facebook on friday detailing a planned day trip to Toledo. I was going to the house of the organiser that night anyway, as it was a mutual friend's birthday party, and when he asked me about it I said "Sure, I'll come along". We were going to take the bus, but when we got to the bus station the next morning we had such a large group (40 or so) that there wasn't enough room, so we had to rent a couple of cars as well. I ended up with the car-rental group.
We drove up to Toledo, meeting up with some (but not all, I have no idea where everyone else went) of the others once we got there, and spent the day looking around and having lunch (several hours on the lunch part). There is a guy from England here this semester, James, and while I enjoyed hanging out with the other kiwis last semester they weren't people I'd usually be good friends with. James has much the same sense of humour as me and it was a real pleasure to talk to him. Now, before you start thinking "ooooh" he has a girlfriend, and I have a not-boyfriend, so it's nothing like that. Anyway it was an awesome day and after the bus-group hopped on the last bus home the car group met up and thought about what to do next. We didn't have to return the cars until 10am the next day, sooo....we went to Madrid!! It was a little chaotic, the two cars got separated in the city centre and we all ended up at various fast food places to eat (we were pretty hungry - I had KFC) before wandering around for a while, as most people hadn't seen it before having only just arrived in Spain. We were all italians except me and a polish guy at this point, and he'd spent a few years in italy so his italian was pretty good.

Finding Madrid is easy, to be honest. It's pretty big. However, leaving it is not quite the same deal! We started walking back to the cars at midnight, found them and got them out of the garages by 1am (we walked slowly), and it took us an hour of following motorway signs for Valencia (!!!) before we were on our way home. I was exhausted so I removed my contacts and went to sleep, only to be woken up god-knows-how-long later by torches and voices calling "over here". The police had pulled us over.
In Italy, it is not compulsory to wear a seatbelt in the back seat. So when we first got the cars, one being more like a minivan with the back two rows of seats removed, and four or five italians jumped in the back and stretched out on the floor, I wondered briefly if that was legal but didn't make a fuss. Turns out it's not :-(. Legal, that is. So, after giving the driver a hard time about alcohol (none of us had been drinking) one police officer got very excited about the fact that we had ten people in a six-seater car, and another one ordered us out of the vehicle. I had just woken up, couldn't see/focus properly coz I'd taken my contacts out, and it was a bit cold so I was shivering. I'm pretty sure that's the reason one officer shone his torch in my face, then asked me to empty my bag. And of course then they had to search everyone else's bags as well. They let us get back in the car after that though, which was good because I was starting to shiver quite violently.
Then the cops had to go. I have no idea why, but maybe there was some kind of emergency somewhere. They rang the local police in Ciudad Real and told them to detain us if the van arrived with more than six people in it, and we waited for the other rental car to return before finally (!) setting off home. We were only about 15mins away. We filled the cars up with petrol before dropping people home, and I got to bed about 6am.

So it was ok in the end. Although I didn't really believe that I personally was liable for anything illegal (had my seatbelt on and everything) I wasn't sure and I thought they might arrest the driver or something. In retrospect we were a bit stupid but I guess there are far worse things you can do. I believe they did the right thing. Give us a scare then let us go. The polish guy asked the police to take some people back (they talked about calling a taxi before the other car was mentioned) which was clearly not an option. "The police are for the people". Some are truly brainless!!!

It was an adventure!!!!! I made some wonderufl new friends though and had a great time. I really quite like Toledo. It's cute. Very quaint.