Madrid Y El Sol

Hola a Todos(Hello to Everyone),

It was so awesome to be back in Spain this last weekend.  It has been 10 years since I lived in Sevilla and had visited Madrid and I was so excited for Ann to experience the culture and the traditions that I had come to love.  Luckily, my Spanish had not been completely lost in the void either.  Most significantly, we had the sun, which as you have read in previous posts, is not all that common in London.  I think that Ann and I could actually be mistaken for Albinos right now due to the paleness of our skin!!!

We had a great hotel called El Emperador, right on Gran Via in Central Madrid.  It was about a 5 minute walk from Puerta Del Sol, which is the main plaza in Madrid.  We did not arrive until about midnight on Friday, so we had all day Saturday and Saturday night to explore the city.  Madrid, despite its size, is a really manageable city because all of the sights and fun areas are centrally located and easy to walk between.  We could have easily spent our day in the infamous Prado(Classical Art Museum) and Reina Sofia(Modern Art) Museum, but with the warmth of the sun, we chose to just walk through the different plazas and enjoy tapas and drinks as we went.  That is truly the Spanish way.  There is a common tradition called Botellon, in which friends and families just gather in plazas and bring bottles of beer/liquor and socialize.  That is why these plazas are at the heart of the Spanish culture.  It may also be why the unemployment rate has been around 20% and will probably never get better!!!  Anyway, we had so much fun.  We discovered a really unique market called "El Mercado de San Miguel."  We took in the tourist scene and entertainment in Plaza Mayor over a cold "Estrella."  One of our favorite plazas was called La Plaza de Santa Anna(ironically), which is considered Madrid's old town.  We did a little bar crawl there and found a great place called "Viva Madrid"(great, despite its cheesy name) and we had a full tapas dinner in a place call "Lateral."  It had been recommended to us, and it was fantastic.  Even though it was very last minute that we decided to head to Madrid this weekend, we were so incredibly happy that we did.  That is one of the awesome and crazy things about living here.  You can decide last minute to spend a weekend in another country with ease and minimal expense.

Speaking of expense, I do have to share one funny story.  In our relationship, Ann is typically the most practical when it comes to purchases and would be the last person to lavish herself with gifts.  She will spoil herself with some things from time to time, as she should, but she is pretty conservative.  Anyway, as we were walking down Calle Preciados(huge shopping street in Madrid), she made a comment about how embarrassed she was of her watch.  She did not care about the face that much, but the white leather band has gotten so dirty that she said it looks terrible.  Anyway, to go along with this story, I have also given her trouble since she was promoted to SENIOR DIRECTOR.  She is probably going to kill me when she reads this!!!  If she gets a little uptight or impatient, I just kindly give a salute and say something about her SENIOR DIRECTOR title.  So, when she was commenting on her watch, I said that she needs a SENIOR DIRECTOR level watch.  This may unfortunately not be funny to you all, but it gave us a good laugh.  I am pretty sure though that a Mickey Mouse watch screams senior director.

Hasta Luego
Kevin