We decided not only to sleep in, but also to embrace the cultural afternoon siesta. Give us a break we have been living out of a suitcase then backpack for 7 weeks now! Ok confession, alarms may have been forgotten to be set this particular morning, but around 11:30 a guy woke us up saying we needed to switch rooms. This delirious move down the hall was one of those "what city/country/continent are we in right now?!" kind of moments. It gets a bit foggy when you mix daily traveling with a few cocktails. In between all of our awesome sleeping, we headed out into the city looking less than pretty. Madrid is AMAZING! It´s strange to think that we have been to so many major cities this month (New York, London, Paris and now Madrid). In some ways a big city is a big city, full of hustle and bustle, tall buildings, advertising, public transportation, anonymity, the divide of the extremely wealthy and the starving homeless, and so many people living together in one area yet totally consumed by their own lives.
We both agree that Madrid is our favorite of these large cities. The people are fun and lively (especially compared to Paris), there is noise and action and crazy street performances everywhere, and all of the buildings maintain charming Spanish architecture. It is a metropolis but with winding streets and alley ways leading from one gorgeous enormous plaza to another. People are not head down, headphones in, cell phone glued to ear - they are walking in groups and chatting and laughing and happy! Granted, some of this may have been the beautiful weather, but whatever the reason we LOVED the vibe! We sat at an outdoor table and enjoyed a delicious brunch: bacon and egg sandwich (typical Spanish food didn´t ya know?). At lunch we saw a lady totally covered in white powder, even in her eyelids. She was pushing around a strange white sculpture on wheels...that looked a little bit like her...but not finished. We couldn´t quite figure this one out...
Lunch put the life back into us (flashback to college drive-thru Sundays after rough Satuday nights...makes us feel old, but we won´t say that because it is rude to our readers who may have a couple years on us). Next we went to one of the huge nearby plazas and sat in the sunshine watching the mix of people and wondering about their days and their lives (we love to do this, obviously). We wandered for a long time after that and were both in an observant kind of daze. We saw some of the strangest street performances ever including people painted as statues and staying completely motionless as a part of real sculptures they had built...that explains the dusty lady we saw at lunch. We walked to Opera, the Madrid equivalent of Time Square as one travel guide explained it...although we disagree completely. It had beautiful old architecture and cinemas everywhere and the only flashy enormous TV screens made up an entire wall of one of the prettiest buildings full of windows, every window was comprised of a screen and as a whole they showed one picture. We saw beautiful gardens and walked up windy cobblestone roads out onto huge boulevards full of ritzy shopping leading to back roads full of tapas bars and random souvenir shops with lots of flamenco outfits. We heard some loud music blaring and walked into a restaurant to find a flamenco show with a woman passionately stomping her feet around and swooshing her dress. She looked just like you would expect a flamenco dancer to look...We did lots of other things in our tired daze until we decided it was definitely siesta time.
Back at the super social hostel (a beautiful former Arabic palace from the 18th century that now serves as a temporary home for TONS of young people travelling around the world or just stopping in Madrid for a weekend) we finally came out of our siesta snooze...or coma, whatever you want to call it...we chilled in the huge and beautiful atrium that is full of couches and bean bags with people conversing in countless languages. We met 3 guys who had met one another in their travels and were now celebrating one of the three musketeers last nights. Canadian Roy who is a Virgo and enjoys long walks on the beach...and being a jackass (he is hilarious and our favorite friend here) lives in Lisbon and is the top porn star in Portugal (...ok inside joke for Roy--miss you darling). Roy met his 2 new amigos for life as they travelled through Lisbon..we think. Fedora wearing, guitar playing, crying when he goes home at night, multilingual tour guide David is from Orange County, Cali and has been travelling the world solo for 6 months now - well, until he met Gabby at a hostel he was working at. Brazilian Gabriel (Gabby) was a man of few words, apparently because he was a little down about heading home from his adventure and parting with his travel buddies the following morning. The words he did speak were pretty hilarious and we liked his dry sense of humor. We also met adorable Yui, who couldn´t speak a word of Spanish and only a handful of English words. She is an artist in Japan (showed us her work on her cell phone, amazing!) traveling in Spain for 3 weeks for her graduation celebration. The 6 of us decided to head out for tapas and beer after Kelly and Jenny got a little 20 minute shower and post-coma time...which turned out to be more like an hour...and 20 minutes, anyway whose counting (well maybe David, Roy, Gabby and Yui). David took us to Cerveceria 100 Montaditos, a great spot for delicious cheap tapas and even more delicious cheap beer! We had a great time and ate and drank until the place closed before heading out into the town to find somewhere to go out. Of course Kelly and Jenny wanted to go to Kapitol, the biggest nightclub in Europe. The consensus amongst the rest of the gang was that biggest wasn´t necessarily synonymous with best so we walked out to Sol, a huuge plaza with beautiful fountains that joins lots of winding side streets with the main road and an artsy subway station entrance made of dark glass. There were young people sitting around every inch of the fountain drinking beers and enjoying each others company. We squeezed in and admired the super moon (apparently some super full full moon that only happens once every...some long number of years - looked like a regular moon to us). We had so much fun sitting and laughing and learning about each other and talking about dumb stuff and serious stuff and life. This whole thing is really about soaking up life and that is what we love about it! Yui departed after a while as she was heading back to Japan the next day. It´s amazing how much you can enjoy someones company without being able to speak much, vibes are everything and she was great.
A friend of David´s came and met us...and writing this we are realizing maybe we never knew her name...and we all headed to an Irish pub (refer to yesterday about what they call a "pub"). David and the nameless girl insisted that Roy knew her too but after giving her a hug he turned to us and mouthed "I have no idea who that is..." David and his Spanish chica were pretty engaged for most of the night, well until she went to get a beer and he decided Kelly was his new favorite...he was weird. Anyway, off topic. We did more sitting around and talking (mostly to Roy) and beer drinking in the super packed pub. From there we decided to go try out the club JOY, but it was closed for a private party. Suddenly we realized how late (or early for some of our baby-boomer followers) it was and that paying 20 euros for a club wasn´t a smart choice. We stopped in the fast moving 24 hours pizza vendor for walk home snacks...David and his Madrid gal pal parted ways after he and Gabby had a tearful goodbye. It´s amazing the relationships people build through this unique experience... rarely do you have people coming and going in your life like this that help lead you to your next destination. We tried to hang out in the atrium of our palace turned hostel but it was past hours so we said goodnight to Roy and Gabby, quickly realizing Gabby had to be up in an hour for a flight. We had convinced Roy to stay another day for museums and sight seeing. Yay! It was a great night in Madrid...we didn´t make it to Europe´s biggest nightclub, but we did make some cool friends and that´s more our style. Time for a nap before breakfast/packing/checkout.
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