A Glorious Reunion. Also known as "My realization that I practically live in the North Atlantic Ocean."

As per popular demand (wink, wink), this post will not actually be new-news, but rather a re-cap of my mini-adventure to Madrid a couple weeks ago.  Enjoy! :)

I have not really ventured out of Lugo much yet.  It has already become my new, safe, little bubble-place.  I went on a half-day excursion to Ourense one of my first weekends here, which was only about 1.5 hours away, and till the 9th, that was it.  Then I reached my maximum tolerance of missing Roxy, and something had to be done.  Roxy & I applied for this program together at the exact same time last year, but, wouldn't you know, we ended up getting placed about as far away from each other as geographically possible -__-  She's in a town called Úbeda in Andalucía, and I'm up here in

Galicia. Quick visual: 

 

So, yeah, meeting up in Madrid was about the most logical/exciting plan we could come up with for a regular 2-day weekend.  & hombre, was it exciting!  Not so logical, but definitely exciting ;)

After a 6 hour bus ride (I finally feel the pain of all my friends who had to take a bus home to Miami from Gainesville), I got to Madrid at 2:30pm on a Friday & saw my lovely friend.  I like to think exhaustion was the only thing keeping us from leaping into each others' arms.  Also the fact that we needed to sit/eat/re-group pronto because we had quite spontaneously, and somewhat accidentally, arrived in this fantastic city without even a shadow of a plan.

Fortunately, we do pretty well at planning together (Lord knows we've had practice, between the ELI & the TESL internship), so we quickly found a place called Cat's Hostel, and even managed to navigate there on the metro!  Excitement.  It was pretty swanky as far as hostels go, I have to think; I'm afraid I might already be spoiled on hostels.  Here's what the common room in the center looked like:

There was also a huge stained glass skylight/ceiling.  Apparently this place used to be a palace?

 

After getting to the hostel (and overcoming the minor obstacle of Roxy not having her passport, which really turned out to be a good thing, because we have pretty much started a life-long friendship with Sergio the deskman now), we went out for coffee/treats at what we thought was a Dunkin' Donuts, but turned out to be this place:

Yep. That says "Bake Place."  And no, they don't have toasted almond coffee.

 Once we'd had our fill of Dunkin' posers coffee & donuts that cannot really be described as "donuts" but rather as "rosquillas," we got some direction from our BFF Sergio and set out in search of tapas (yum) and música latina (of course).  Despite knowing which "zona" (barrio) to go to, we still wandered around aimlessly and without seeing anywhere truly promising till Roxy spotted a little beauty of a bar called "La cabra en el tejido."  It was small, cozy, and funky, and I will definitely be going back someday.

I don't really have any pictures of our experience after that, which was a truly weird one.  We walked over to the zona where most of the clubs are (our hostel was in a perfect, central location to all these places), and were immediately assailed by men & women from all directions trying to get us in to their clubs. (Not as creepy as it sounds, they were promoters.  So still creepy, but somewhat legitimately so. Somewhat.)  This is me in the plaza before they descended:

It ended up being a good night though.  We were able to go into about... oof, 5 or 6 different clubs, at least, hunting for music we liked and more often than not getting some sort of free drink with our entrance.  The two of us out & dancing really made me miss Gainesville!  & it felt a bit like home to hear a bunch of salsa/merengue/reggaeton songs that I know; I'm still not familiar with much Spanish music.  Called it an "early night" (by Spanish standards) this time & were back at home, sweet hostel by 3am.

Saturday was our exciting, sight-seeing day!  It was gorgeous & mostly sunny, and we had a perfect day/afternoon.  We set out for the Plaza Mayor to start with, and stopped for churros & chocolate (a typical Spanish "breakfast") along the way.  

 This was so sweet/fried that my stomach felt weird for hours afterward... Pero valió la pena ;)

 It had to be the place with the fluffy chairs.  We saw them the night before and just had to sit in them.

 After this little stop, we ended up witnessing a Moroccan civil rights protest.  It was pretty crazy, but I guess excitement just happens wherever we are.  It was very interesting to see, and we also got to hear some pretty cool live music as part of the protest.

The semi-confusion created by all this, meant we ended up wandering a bit before getting to the plaza, which was also fine because then we stumbled upon this really cool marketplace:

 And finally we arrived in the Plaza Mayor:

From the plaza, it wasn't far to get to the Royal Palace.  I'd been to the Palacio Real before, on the EF Tour when I was 17, but it was no less exciting going again.  Maybe even more exciting, because I don't know if I ever really believed I'd make it back!  There was also a giant, floral shrine set up to the Virgin of Pilar, because apparently the day before had been a festival for that in Madrid.

                                                                              

Unfortunately, pictures were not technically allowed in the palace, so we only got a few.  These are some of the best, and they're of the view & the ceiling when you first walk up the staircase into the palace:

Not too shabby, eh?


 Following our palace & Goya exhibit expedition (we gained entry to both when we paid for our tickets), we went out for Indian food for lunch.  "Ethnic cuisine" is super hard to come by in Spain, and in cities as small as Lugo it doesn't even exist.  Plus, as it was pretty chilly even in Madrid, it was kind of nice eating a lunch that made you sweat a little ;)

At this point, if you're still reading, congratulations.  It's getting late here & even my endurance for this post is wearing thin.  There's really just one more thing I want to include.  The flamenco show Saturday night!  Ay, ay, ay, this might have been my favorite part of the whole trip.  Actually, it probably definitely was.  We'd gotten a flyer for a show in the Plaza Mayor earlier that day, & ended up calling & making a reservation that afternoon.  They had a special deal where, with the cover charge, you could get a bottle of wine & tapas along with the show.  Basically perfecto.  Also we had a waiter that everyone (the performers and other waiters) called Patata (potato).  Which is just funny.

It was incredible to watch.  The dancers and guitarist were all so, so passionate, and also clearly incredibly supportive of each other.  The female dancer's father (who was apparently at the show) even got on stage at one point to dance with her (he is obviously the one who taught her to love flamenco), and the guitarist's girlfriend was also watching the show.  She was a dancer herself and got up to dance with them a bit at the end of the show.  It was just a wonderful time.  This is Roxy & I with the dancers after the show (we were at a table right by where they would enter/exit/change, & they were nice to enough to chat with us & take pictures afterwards :D).

I really wanted to upload a video, too, but for some reason it won't work directly from my computer, and youtube told me it was going to take about an hour to upload there and I'm tired.  So, if you want & have access, you can see part of one of the last acts of the show on my facebook.  Sorry it's not also here, but I'm new to this blogging thing :-/

The rest of that night was given to dancing & merry-making (oh, yeah, and having an debit card be comido por una ATM machine...) & generally trying to rep latina culture here in Spain, 'cause that's how we do.  But I don't think I really need to go into all that, that's normal stuff for us. All the really interesting parts of the trip are already up here, as well as the pictures.  (After getting in super late/early on Saturday night/Sunday morning, suffice to say neither of us felt very photogenic the next day jeje.)

So, there you have it. Madrid, Take 1.  & many more adventures to come <3