Aaaaaand we’re back! After an absolutely lovely month in San Diego full of family, friends, surfing, and all the wonderful things San Diego has to offer, I’m back on the road. Or, sitting on the couch, listening to the sounds of the street below my friend’s flat in the center of Madrid, to be exact.
I could have easily made Hawai’i my home, but I committed to being in Barcelona on August 20th for my brothers’ birthdays well before I knew I’d be in Hawai’i. Had I not made this commitment, I might have melted into the jungle never to be seen again. Alas, Europe called. On Sunday morning, Dad was kind enough to drop me off at the airport at 4:45 AM. I donned my new backpack full of what I hope to be everything I’ll need (and likely much more) for the next three months, and set off for adventure.
I had a 5 hour layover in Philadelphia, so I texted my friend Mel who lives in DC, which I figured was close enough to Philly pop in and say hello for an hour because everything is close on the East coast. In fact, DC is not that close to Philadelphia, but Mel serendipitously happened to be driving back to DC from the Poconos that Sunday afternoon, and was gracious enough to swoop me up from the airport for an authentic Pennsylvania experience. Due to lack of time, we stuck close to the airport and ended up having a delightfully Americana lunch of Tacoritos and fish bowl strawberry margaritas from Ruby Tuesday, all of which I would say screams PA.
Mel dropped me off at the airport with just enough time to get through security and prove to the airline that I’m fully vaccinated and have a return flight (somewhere, sometime), before boarding for Madrid. 6.5 squishy but tolerable hours later, I landed in Madrid, breezed through customs and was picked up by my best Spanish friend, Edward. I know Edward through Annette and Monica, who met him when they studied abroad in Madrid. He is one of the most kind, generous, knowledgeable, and hospitable people I’ve ever met. Not only did he pick me up from the airport, but offered to host me for an undisclosed amount of time, AND has the cutest brown lab named Ipa who I’ve been cuddling and practicing my Spanish with.
Now would be a good time to end this post because of an agreement I made with myself. I decided against bringing my laptop to Europe for a few reasons: it’s big, heavy, clunky, and stupid, but I’m still an aspiring travel writer, so I gotta write. Right? And writing novellas like this on one’s phone sucks, so I agreed with myself that I would leave the big stupid slow computer at home, but committed to writing one blog post every day. This means that they will (theoretically) be shorter and easier to manage (and remember things), but I’ve already blown it.
Sure, I could cut myself some slack and say it was a travel day so it doesn’t count, but there are going to be a lot of those. Eight thousand words later here we are (but I can’t really see on my 4” iPhone 8 screen).
After arriving at Edward’s super charming flat in el centro de la ciudad, meeting his partner Alejandra and their dog Ipa, I made myself go out for a walk with the hopes of staving off jet lag. I walked to the Plaza Mayor and Puerta Del Sol, marveling at the charming cobblestone streets lined with delightful looking tapas bars and restaurants. I vowed to eat and drink at each and every one.
After an hour of walking around in the 102 degree heat massively jet lagged, I headed back to the flat where Alejandra offered to make us lunch. I sat down on the couch and promptly woke up three hours later to a delicious, home made quiche just being pulled out of the oven. Who died and made me queen, we all might be asking.
After eating I took another nap, which was as blissful as it sounds. Then Edward said it was time to go out. He works for the biggest beer company in Spain, Mahou San Miguel, knows the ins and outs of the industry, and is seemingly friends with every bartender in town. We went to a very chic rooftop bar for sunset around 9pm where everybody was becoming Insta famous and then for dinner at a place that used to house a newspaper company. You have to walk through a nondescript bookstore to get to it which I thought was very cool.
For our last stop of the night we went for a drink at an old porn theater that has been converted into a very trendy bar called Sala Equis, as a tribute to its former glory days. Fortunately, it is right down the street from Edward’s place because by this point I was running on fumes (and beer). Once home, I crashed into a blissful sleep for about three hours before waking up at 4:30am ready to rock and roll. Now here I am, sitting on the couch, listening to the city wake up, trying to decide which epic museum I should visit today. What a fucking life, eh?!
P.S. This and future posts will be sent from a shitty old iPhone so please use that as my excuse for all typos, terrible formatting, lack of photos, run on sentences, grammatical errors and other egregious writing faux pas.
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