Three days before I leave for Madrid and I’m actually a bit nervous.

My wife and I have decided to travel to Europe separately this time because we were able to redeem credit card points and get round trip tickets for free. The  catch was that we only had enough points on our credit cards to get tickets on different airlines. So on Sunday, I will travel by myself to Madrid, check into the hostel that we’ve reserved and take in the surrounding sites alone. The next day I’ll meet my wife at the airport and we’ll begin our Europe trip 2009 together.

The reason for my nervousness is that for that first day I won’t have my GPS enabled wife with me when I land in Madrid. I’ve become so used to having my beloved, “Cat Cat”, (in reference to Tom Tom) to guide me through unfamiliar territory that I find my own sense of direction beginning to fade. Cat, (my wife) has an almost GPS quality sense of direction that I’ve come to absolutely  rely on through our many trips. She points and I turn! It’s a simple system. We rarely if ever get lost and if we do, (get lost that is), it’s usually my fault.

So to combat my temporary lack of Cat Cat, I’ve looked up the area that I’m going to be staying in and have begun to familiarize myself with the routes and surroundings all through the magic that is Google! By entering in the address of the hostel, I not only found the best route to take to get there, but have also been able to do a virtual walk around the neighborhood to familiarize myself with those surroundings.

At first I was a bit surprised by what I saw. Graffiti was everywhere! Did we just book ourselves into a gang infested area? If this were Chicago, I would assume that we did, but by doing the virtual walk, I realized that the area seams to be pretty good. Graffiti didn’t seem to be an indicator of the safeness of the area.

After spending a couple of hours, “walking around” Madrid online, I feel fairly comfortable that I know the area. I’ve spotted several restaurants that look promising and walked through areas that from an arial view looked great but on the ground really didn’t look that special.  Ahhhh Google, as the, “Wildwood Weed” song lyrics say, “we all thought it was kinda handy, take a trip and never leave the farm”! Thanks to Google Maps, I have a pretty fare understanding of the neighborhood now. I will print out those maps, and be able to explore a bit before my wife joins me and I go back to our fool proof system of she points and I turn.  Next stop, Madrid