Nov 1: Leiden – Eindhoven – Madrid

As I left my room to catch the 5:15am train to the airport, I ran into several of my housemates returning from the Halloween parties of the previous night. I had been perfectly content to get to sleep early when I had been dragged out of bed the night before and named Toby’s gypsy pirate slave, despite my protests about being sick. Apparently gypsy pirate slaves don’t get to be sick. After assurances from my housemates that we would come home in time for me to get at least some sleep before my big trip, I began to get into costume. We made quite a crew biking across town: a monk, a pirate, a gypsy pirate slave, Africa, an 80s girl, and Joe the Plumber. I left early and did manage to get a nap before the trip, though as my housemates pointed out, they came back before I had to leave, I could have stayed!

I caught my train, the bus, and the plane and arrived in Madrid by 12:30pm. Philip was waiting for me and after we found me some food, we were off. [Note: Bogadillas are fantastic Spanish sandwiches, traditionally made of a smoked ham, cheese, and good bread.]

We took the metro to Philip’s homestay to drop off my bag and then were were off to see the city! I had a great time as Philip showed me around Puerta del Sol and Plaza Major and the Palace and the National Cathedral and many other places that I can not longer recall but were fun to see. He filled my brain with little tidbits of information and I felt like I was on my own personal tour – and I was!

We went into a store and purchased the traditional sweets of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, and then I broke the news to Philip: having just eaten the treats, I now felt obliged to attend a Catholic mass – it was a holy day of obligation and the rough equivalent of celebrating Christmas without the Jesus part. So we found a church and sat through mass. I expected everything to come rushing back to me from Honduras – I practically had the entire mass memorized after Holy Week this year – but it did not. I did remember bits and pieces, but the acoustics were so bad that it was hard to listen to what others were saying to catch up again.

In the evening, we walked around the Prado, which is free to the public from 6 – 8pm each night. Philip was in a course on Spanish art and knew so much about the paintings! It was fun to listen as he pointed out all of the symbolism that I never would have caught had he not explained it to me.

My favorite part was seeing the paintings by Goya and Velazquez that I had learned about in my high school Spanish class. At the time, I thought the unit on some art museum in Spain was ridiculous – I wasn’t ever going to go there. Until I did. But Philip was able to explain the significance of the paintings better than my teacher ever had. I knew what parts of the paintings were significant, but not why. He filled in those gaps.

By the time the museum closed at 8pm, I was exhausted. We went back to the apartment and I took a nap before going out for the night. Philip took me to a cute little tapas place and I experienced the terrible Spanish service that makes me glad that in America we tip our servers. It gives them a reason to be nice.

Following the potato and meat tapas, we checked out the café across the street, but it was too full and the clubs don’t start to fill up until at least 1am. We walked to the other side of the city center for churros con chocolate at the “best place in town.” Churros are softer here, not crunchy like in the US, and served with a cup full of liquid chocolate. Not like hot cocoa, but like a fondue. It was a deliciously rich dessert that I was unable to finish for all the sugar it contained.

We rushed back across town after the churros to get into a salsa club by midnight (free admission!) but arrived to find that free admission does not exist on Saturday nights. Oh well. We found another club and danced a few songs, ending on one by Shakira which made me miss Ella and Elyse and our renditions of Shakira songs on the bus on the way to Oklahoma in 2006.

In Madrid, many clubs hire people to stand on the streets and give out coupons to get people to go to that club. One guy found us and offered us free drinks. Despite the fact that neither of us actually wanted the free drink (I was on antibiotics and Philip does not like beer), we poor college students couldn’t turn down free. Upon entering the club I was delighted to see that it was all decked out in Halloween decorations. Even more fun was listening to the Spaniards try to pronounce the holiday. "AHH – low – een!" After that, we decided to call it a night. We were both sick, exhausted, and had an early morning ahead of us.