bryn´s good friend from high school, tyler andre, is living in madrid with his wonderful spanish girlfriend sara, in a ballin apartment right in the heart of the city, and they were generous enough to give up part of their living room to let us stay with them for four nights. bryn and india feel so lucky to know so many people all over europe who have opened their homes to them. tyler and sara were fantastic hosts, sharing their favorite little bars, museums, parks, and burger joints with us. being from madrid, sara was also an excellent tour guide, spouting off history about all the buildings and memorials they passed on their long walks.
madrid is a very international city. on their first night out on the town, tyler took bryndia to his friend´s flat in sol for a little pregame. (though in spain, you must remember, pregaming doesn´t start until about 11 pm and the actual party doesn´t start until about 2 am.) the party was hosted by a croatian girl and her visiting boyfriend and attended by multiple nationalities, including a german girl, an australian girls, a french girl, an italian boy, many spaniards, and a few americans as well. lucky for bryn and india, the language that most everyone seemed to speak was english. a couple of glasses of sangria in, and their host pushed the kitchen table to the side, cranked the ipod speakers, and let the dance party begin. india taught bryn how to salsa dance. when the group was good and going, tyler introduced everyone to chatroulette.com, a website in which you are randomly linked with another video chatter from somewhere around the globe. note: this can be dangerous. but also fun. definitely check it out. when the group got too sweaty from the dancing (and the roulette), they moved to a club down the block and got sweatier to some techno music. it turned into another one of those 6 am spanish mornings. you know, the kind where walking home, you pose for photos on random mopeds, and then make six quesadillas in your kitchen and pass out real hard.
the next day, sara and tyler took bryndia to the caixa forum, a modern art museum, where they saw an exhibit of miquel barcelo, an artist who had a variety of work, all of which bryndia enjoyed... some more than others. that night, they met up with india´s friend lucy mckenzie, also teaching english in spain, and wandered around the gay neighborhood, stopping to munch on chocolate and churros.
once again, bryndia was blessed with beautiful weather, so sara and tyler took them to parque del retiro, a big park that used to be the private gardens for the king of spain. the four of them wandered for hours, eating ice cream, and oogling over the ridiculous amounts of cute babies and puppies. when it started to cool off, they headed to the reina sophia, the modern art museum in madrid, and saw picasso´s, dali´s, and learned about the spanish civil war from sara. that night, bryn and india got taken to tyler´s favorite americana restaurant, the burger bar, where they ate burgers with goat cheese and blueberry sauce and were, again, puzzled by how restaurants in europe don´t do tap water.
after a little siesta post dinner, tyler and bryndia headed out on the town, tracking down lucy and india´s other friends, amy ulmer and jane clark, in a bar in bilboa. there´s something really special about meeting up with long lost friends in foreign countries, and the group of them got silly until the late night, hanging out with a spanish rugby team and singing along to the jackson five.
on bryndia´s final day in madrid, tyler and sara again played tour guides and showed them all around the latin quarter where the four of them drank mojitos on rooftop terraces, visited the prince´s palace and gardens, saw ancient egyptian ruins, and heard some very romantic stories about sara´s grandparents during the spanish civil war.
madrid was a blur of walking, drinking, eating, art and sunshine.
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