Sunday, March 19, 2006

Parranda!

Friday night through Sunday afternoon have been one blur of night life. I forgot that friday was St. Patty's day (btw, happy bday lila!). We started seeing tons of ppl with green joker hats, and hunted for one. Unfortunately it got lost some time in the last club we were at...

Friday started off at a Korean restaurant. Funny, isn't it? one of my last dinners in NY was at one of those. The first day I walked the neighborhood I ran into it, it's only a block away. So we organized our first outing there. Tons of food and good company. We met up with Cris, Figment's friend from Holland, and the partying started. From there to the irish bars to dance clubs, with random bars along the way.

Downtown Madrid is littered with tons of tiny bars. As you walk the streets there are ppl with flyers that try to get you into their place, luring you with a free first shot. Clubs are free to get in before 2am or so. This weekend was also a big holiday, it's father's day, and Spaniards get Monday off, and in Valencia there is a big festival called "Las Fallas", so Madrid was relatively empty. We toyed with the idea of going there, it'd be like a Mardi Gras kinda deal... but ended up staying local instead.

So, Fri night drinks and dancing. We returned at some point when the sun was coming up. Slept all day, woke up and drove to the outskirts of Madrid, to a wireless broadband internet connection :D and clean clothes for Cris. It has been raining most of the weekend (3 yrs ago when I was around it did the same thing... and Madrid is a dry place!). By midnight we were ready to go out again and find a goth club. We didn't get to the one we were thinking of, but happened to see a goth girl walk by and followed her to another hole in the wall. Kinda empty, but we enjoyed ourselves. It was a very eclectic music selection, and ppl dance different here. Although the DJ kinda sucked, the mixing was very choppy. And it was odd to hear A-ha and then Rammstein...

Now it's Sunday. I'm outside of Madrid again, hanging out, and feeling just like home... with Cris playing video games and me hooked on the computer. And since he doesn't speak Spanish, I've been talking in English all this while! Not quite conducive to absorbing local culture... lol. But I guess less of a culture shock adjustment. Since tomorrow it's still a holiday, I'm going to leave visiting the Prado for Tuesday.

I haven't looked into a way out of Madrid towards Paris yet. On one side, it's hard to visit for such a short period of time. On the other, I saw on the news about more violent protests in Paris... need to find out details and see what I have to avoid and know.

There is a lot more to this weekend, of course, but I'm leaving that for the book ;)

and yey for european bread!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Val...
Been reading your blog. Spain sound very interesting and I like the "sieta" thing they have, closed from 2 to 5 and take a Nap :)
Seems you are having a great time :D Need to see more pictures.

Saludos desde CR --> APUY

PS: Manda saludos a Angela y a su fam de mi parte ;)

Anonymous said...

more bloody pics for those of us who are living vicariously through you. I'd say something meaningful in spainish...but I know only a little south american spainish...I'm told european spainish is different...but have a blast! Sure sounds like you are.
JohnnyB

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're enjoying yourself.. I'm barely surviving the weather here.. Where's my spring break!?!?!?!
Stay Healthy^^