So... What next?

Madrid then. It's the second time I come here. First came I came to visit M. and had stayed approximately 10 hours. This time I came to see L., but I'll stay longer: 30 hours! I can confidently say I know Madrid like the back of my hand by now...

Apart from the pleasure of seeing an old friend, I'd say that my experiences here worth mentioning are two. First of all, the gigantic park they have in the heart of the city, called Parque de Retiro if I remember correctly, which is a valuable oxygen source for the spanish capital. Countless acres of land with trees, grass, lakes, fountains and walking paths, all available for the people to spend their time any way they like. Numerous rollerbladers wizzing here and there, musicians playing, athletes running, jugglers practising and young kids being a pain in the backside for the parents and anyone else around and all this on a daily basis. In my opinion, this is a wonderful space that would be great to find in all cities around the world.

This of course is a daylight activity. During the night one needs to eat and drink, right? tapas and beer to be more specific and L. and F. took me to the ideal place. A well-known little bar (you can tell by the number of not only tourists but locals every night) where with every three glasses of beer you buy, they give you two plates of tapas. And all this for five euros. Now don't tell me that this place is not worth spending all your nights at! I for one, if I had one more night here, I'd pay this little dungeon of culinary goodness another visit. The only bad thing is that it gathers the worst examples of both aforementioned categories. Most tourists that go there are of the type that intend to get drunk and end up making fools out of themselves (rather than the ones who intend making fools out of themselves and end up getting drunk - we have nothing against those). As far as the locals, most of them get there because of the mass appearance of species of the first category, as an attempt to find easy sexual education. Both these groups can get rather annoying, but we did our own thing and had a blast.

It's already saturday night and I'm walking towards the airplane that will take me back to the south american continent (no, this time I actually made it on time). I can't help feeling a strange sadness... I don't know if it's got to do with the fact that I'm leaving again (from wherever that may be), if it's because I don't know where I'm heading, because once again I hung out with people that I will seriously miss or just because I'm quite tired. Whichever the case, I have a loooong way ahead of me that holds numerous joys and an equal number of suprises (both pleasant and unpleasant obviously). Ready or not, here I come! You joining? :)


With my lovely L.

M.