Okay, get comfortable... this is going to be a loooong post!
So, this week was the best week ever. Hands down. Matt and I had SUCH an awesome time together and it was so great to get to show him Spain and let him see where I live and what my life is like over here.
I sometimes have attention issues, so I'll divide this up by day
SATURDAY: Alli and I took the bus up to Madrid to go to the airport and meet our guys. Our friend Kaitlin was also on our bus, and it turns out her dad was on Matt's flight. So, the three of us took the metro from the bus station to the airport. I managed to put on eyeliner and mascara on a moving metro (subway) with only the mirror in my bronzer case. I was very impressed with myself. We got to the airport and managed to find where we could wait for them. I kept saying I was either going to throw up because I was so excited. I was literally bouncing up and down and shaking while we were waiting for them. They were laughing because I was staring at the baggage claim doors way too early. Matt's flight had just landed and I was sitting there staring at groups of people who were CLEARLY not from Chicago coming through the doors. Finally, we started hearing our midwestern accents and Kaitlin's dad came through! At this point, I was starting to freak out. I kept staring and staring and saw Matt come through a few minutes later. SO exciting. I (of course), did the whole crying and making a scene thing, but it was just so good to get to see him. We went and sat in an airport cafe and had some water/diet coke (guess who had which), and I got a tortilla (egg and potato omelette) bocadillo because I hadn't eaten since dinner the night before. So Matt got his first few bites of boc in and we hopped in a taxi and got to our hotel.
We checked in and then both crashed for about four hours... we were tired! After our long siesta, we decided to venture out. We went across the street to the Parque de Retiro, where we saw more people making out than we ever had in our lives. Seriously, everywhere you looked there was really intense Spanish PDA going on. Ew. So we took some good pictures, saw some good stuff, and headed back. We then got ready for dinner and walked up to Chic Atocha (the wine bar I went to with my friends in January/February) for a few glasses of wine while we waited for 8:30 to roll around so we could go to La Sanabresa, which I truly believe is one of the best-kept secrets in Madrid (even though I originally heard about it through a guide book... okay, maybe not so secret). In any event, we had our first glasses of wine of the trip and headed up the hill to get to the restaurant.
La Sanabresa was even better than I had remembered it. It has incredible, incredible food and is extremely reasonably priced. That night, I had chicken croquettes and RABBIT (I know! It was so good!) and Matt had mushrooms and swordfish, which he dubbed some of the best fish he's ever eaten. And Matt really likes fish, so that's saying something. We split a bottle of
Marques de Cacéres, which was absolutely phenomenal red wine and is available in the US (we clearly checked the second we had internet) and split a piece of cheesecake for dessert. Amazing meal.
After dinner, we stopped by an alimentación to pick up a bottle of wine to have in our room. Breezy had called earlier that day and asked if we would be up for going out with her and her boyfriend, Chris, that night. Matt's jetlag wasn't too bad, so we said we were definitely up for it. We went back to Kapital, the seven-floor disco that I described in my Madrid post from January/February. I have to say that going with Matt was SO much different than going in a group of American girls. We had a blast and totally threw Matt and Chris into the world of Euro clubs. We got back to the hotel (which was RIGHT around the corner) at 3:30ish and then just crashed for the night.
SUNDAY: I woke up around 9:30 and headed down to the McDonalds (AMERICA!!!!!) that was on the ground floor of our hotel building to get a diet coke and some free WiFi while Matt slept off some jetlag. He came down to meet me and we got in a solid 30 minutes of internet time. Then we dropped my laptop off in our room and ventured out to explore a little bit. On our way downstairs, we were in the elevator with a soccer player from Recretivo, who are a Primera Liga team and were playing in Madrid that day. The team was staying in our hotel! We walked down the street and saw some sights, bought some more wine (notice a theme developing) at an alimentación for that night, and enjoyed the 73 degree and sunny weather. We then dropped out stuff off in the room, got changed, and headed over to Gran Via for lunch at TGIFridays (I know, I know... I just really miss American food!). When lunch was over, we hopped on the metro and got to the Bernabeau stadium for the Real Madrid game!!
Oh. My. Gosh. I am SO SO SO glad we were able to go to that game. It was an atmosphere like nothing I've ever experienced. We got off the metro and were immediately inundated with Real Madrid mania. There were vendors completely lining the streets selling shirts, jerseys, scarves, pictures, and soccer balls, people screaming Real Madrid chants, people from all over Europe wearing the logos of a million different football clubs, and a British man dressed as a chicken (including a yellow mini tutu). Absolutely nuts and absolutely awesome. We met up with Breezy and Chris in a pub across from the stadium and had a few Amstels (not Amstel light... "Amstel heavy" as Matt calls it) and had a good time getting ready for the game. We took a lap around the stadium at about 4:15 and got up to our seats at 4:40, perfect timing for the 5:00 kick off.
The game was so cool. Soccer in Europe is seriously a way of life. The Bernabeau stadium, home of Real Madrid, is an 80,000 person stadium and was completely sold out. There were people everywhere waving scarves and flags, screaming, and chanting. I had a lot of the cheers stuck in my head for the rest of the day... very reminiscent of sorority recruitment ("come on in join the fun..."). Real Madrid beat Almeria 3-0, which was very exciting. The stadium went crazy every time a goal was scored and they really do scream "GOL!!!!!!" at the top of their lungs. It was so great and the best part for me (sorry, cheesy) was getting to watch Matt's reaction to it.
After the game, we went out to dinner with Breezy and Chris and Alli and her boyfriend Matt. We just got some quick bocadillos and sat outside at this little cafe. It was great to get to talk with everyone and hear how everyone else's weeks were going so far. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and crashed for the night.
MONDAY: Monday was one of our travel days. We got up pretty early and checked out our free hotel breakfast, which was fantastic, and then headed out to the bus station to catch our bus to Granada. The difference in the bus rides alone and with Matt were insane. The five hours flew by and I was able to introduce him to the world of the Spanish bus system. We got back to Granada, checked into the hotel, and then relaxed a little bit before heading out. We went to an internet café for a little bit and then got some ice cream at my favorite ice cream place and walked around the city. I took him to SuperSol, the grocery store by school, and we got some tinto de verano to botellón with that night at the mirador de san nicolas, the best view in the world. We got ready and met up with Breezy and Chris to hike up there. We were hoping to make it by sunset, but by the time we got there, it was dark. It ended up being even better, though, because the Alhambra was lit up and it was a perfect temperature. After walking down, we decided to all head over to BADos for some drinks and tapas before dinner.
Matt LOVED BADos (as I knew he would.... there really isn't a way to not like it). We first ordered drinks and the first round of tapas (hot turkey and cheese sandwiches with olive oil and french fries with garlic aioli and some sort of spicy ketchup-y thing. After that round, Matt was hooked and we decided to stay there for more tapas and make a dinner out of it, which I am always up for. We got another round of drinks (tinto de verano for me and Alhambra beer for Matt) and the second round of tapas, which are Spain's version of hamburgers with pasta salad and fried shrimp, and then a third round with the tortilla española sandwiches and more fries. Our favorite bartender, Alé, was working and was very excited to meet our novios. It was a fabulous introduction to BADos for Matt.
I then took Matt to Dolce Vita, which is one of Granada's chupiterias. A chupiteria is a shot bar, basically with a huge list of shots that you can order. Some are tasty (i.e. #43-- "Shamrock." Mint, chocolate liqueor, and Bailey's). Some are awful (i.e. #83-- "Five Star General." Jagermeister, mint, rum, tequila, and Goldschlagger). We had three pretty solid shots and then headed back to the hotel to relax for the night.
TUESDAY: Beach day!! We got up pretty early and caught our 10:00am bus to Motril, which is the closest beach to Granada. We had a great bus ride there and the weather was fantastic. We did have a slight hiccup when we got to the bus station and couldn't decide how to get to the beach. After the group decision had been made to try to walk, we started wandering Motril trying to find the beach instead of waiting 20 minutes for the bus. As you can probably imagine, the walk to the beach ended up being us wandering Motril for two hours, asking three different people how to get there, before asking a policeman where the beach was and having him tell us that it wasn't in walking distance. So we hopped in a cab and got there within ten minutes.
The beach was absolutely gorgeous. The sand was perfect, there were really cool rocks everywhere, the waves of the Mediterranean were incredible, the Sierra Nevada was behind us.... just absolutely stunning. We waded a little bit into the sea and spent most of the day just laying around and relaxing. We took the bus home around 5:00pm and got back to Granada around 6:15. We relaxed and got ready and then went out for a fantastic dinner in Plaza Bibrambla.
We went to Centro, the restaurant my dad and I discovered during his visit last month. We got a great table outside and just had one of the best dinners I've ever had in my life. It was so incredible to get to sit in such a beautiful place, with Matt, eat great food, drink great wine, and just sit there with all the time in the world to talk about whatever we wanted to. It's definitely an experience I'll never forget. Matt had the sea bass and it was the most impressive presentation of fish I've ever seen. It was an entire fish (scales, fins, eyeballs, and all), cooked in a mound of coarse salt. They brought it over to the table and set it up on a tray and then filleted it right at the table for him. SO cool, and he said it was really good.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and just relaxed. We're big on watching old episodes of The Office at home, and getting to watch them with him on my computer here felt so awesome! It's one of the things I miss most about home :-)
WEDNESDAY: Wednesday was one of our only non-travel days. We slept in a little bit and then ventured out a little bit. We got some tortas de chocolate for breakfast (YUM!) and then walked around by my school a little bit. I had to go and take a literature test, so I did that really fast while Matt tried to find some internet. Our internet café's internet was down (weird) so we went to CEGRI to use their computers super fast. It was fun to get to show him where I go to school! After our internet adventure, we went to get some schwarma for lunch and then walked back up to the Mirador de San Nicolas to see the view in the daytime. That's a view I will never get sick of... it's so gorgeous.
We hiked back down to the city center and got some more ice cream and walked around and shopped for souvenirs and then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner with my host family! We got over there at around 8:30 and I showed him around and we chatted with the kids before dinner. Carlos was absolutely in AWE of Matt and didn't leave his side the entire night. They bonded over Super Mario, which was adorable. Rosario loved Matt and kept telling me that I was a very lucky girl and that he was very handsome (both of which I already knew). She served us crema de espinaca (cream of spinach) soup, cured ham (Matt loved it), and tortilla española (my favorite), plus flan for dessert. Carlos was asking Matt if he liked chocolate milk, and Matt happens to love chocolate milk, so Carlos sprinted into the kitchen to make them each a glass. So cute!
After dinner, we went to Chupiteria 69, another chupiteria, for a few shots before heading to BADos to meet up with everyone one last time and say goodbye. We each had a glass of wine and then bought a bottle at an alimentación to enjoy back at the hotel while we watched more of The Office and relaxed.
THURSDAY: We got up early, had some breakfast at the hotel, and then hopped in a cab to get to the bus station for our bus to Madrid. It was a great ride (watched a lot of Office on the laptop) and we made good time. We took the metro to our hotel, checked in, relaxed a little, and then headed back into the city center to have dinner at La Sanabresa again. It was a great last dinner. We headed back to the hotel and had one more night of relaxing and watching The Office and CNN International.
Friday we got up and had breakfast and then went to the airport. It was so hard to say goodbye, but it was just such an amazing week. I am glad beyond words that he was able to come and visit and that we were able to spend such a great week together. It really could not have been better :-)
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