One of my favorite holidays and I got to talk about it all week? Hell yeah.
As we all know, Halloween was celebrated this past weekend. Here in Spain, the holiday is still celebrated, but it is not nearly as huge of a party compared to the United States. Throughout my entire week at school, I was able to share the history of Halloween and its role in American culture. Additionally, I shared traditions, past costumes, and prepared a few different homework lessons featuring witches, ghosts, and haunted houses.
While I taught about my Halloween experiences, I also learned a little about the celebration in Spain. Here, costumes are almost always spooky, complete with face paint featuring skeletons or bloody vampires. They also take November 1st to recognize All Saints Day, meaning several businesses and schools are closed for the day. Not having to go to school on a Monday is already top-tier, but I was definitely a lot more grateful for it this week.
To celebrate Halloween, Jude, Arthur, and I trekked up to Madrid for the weekend and met up with two of their friends from Canada. What an adventure. Unwisely, we waited until the last minute to figure out transportation. On Thursday, we took a BlaBlaCar to Málaga and missed our connecting bus to Madrid by a mere five or ten minutes. Stressed, we had to figure things out and decided to take the next bus to Granada at 11:15 pm, which would then take us to Madrid the next morning at 7:00 am. Yes, we had to stay in the Granada bus station for six hours. I don’t recommend.
However, we took advantage of our five hours in Málaga and hiked to the top of a castle for a great view of the city at night. After the connection in Granada, we finally arrived in Madrid at noon on Friday. Making our way to our Airbnb ASAP, we all took a nap to refuel from minimal sleep on the bus. The Airbnb was a tough situation, as we found there was only one double-sized bed in the room compared to the two listed on the website. As you can imagine, it was a cramped nap. Though don’t worry, we were able to ask for an extra twin-sized mattress for the night.
After some food, we met the boys’ friends for dinner in central Madrid. Eventually, it was decided that we might as well check out the nightlife scene right away. Teatro Kapital is known as one of the best clubs in Madrid, towering at seven stories with a different “theme” on each floor. You already know I broke out “Dancing Queen” for karaoke on the second floor. The club was very cool, but a bit difficult at times when we would lose a member or two of our group.
Saturday made for a short day - in a sense. The nightlife here is definitely different, so our 6:00 am return to the Airbnb called for a 1:00 pm start to the day. Our group of five checked out the National Archeological Museum, grabbed some quick food, and quickly got ready for the Saturday evening pub crawl. Decked out as a witch, pirate, lady bug, and two ballerinas, we were ready to go. The pub crawl took us to four different bars, and carried an evening of new friends and significant criminal activity.
On our way to the final bar, Arthur and I had begun talking to a man about Spain. I had my purse in front of my body - like you’re supposed to - yet I happened to glance down and saw the man’s hand reaching into my purse. If you know me, you know my temper can get hot FAST, especially if a bit of refreshments are involved. Let’s just say I carried out my own police work and got my phone back and the man was arrested. Luckily, there was a cop nearby who heard and saw my commotion and he quickly came to our service. I was able to help catch not only one, but two pick-pocketers, and gave a statement to the police and everything. Yeah, I feel like a badass.
At the final stop, we left our coats on a chair since there was no closet and came to find them missing at the end of the night. Annoyed, we headed out to catch the bus back. A block later, Arthur spotted our coats laying on the ground under a tree! We think someone took them anticipating there to be stuff in the pockets and ditched them when they found our pockets empty. Lucky for us, but so weird.
Thankfully, Sunday was not nearly as eventful, and we just checked out a few attractions in the city. One of our first stops involved a huge thrift market, full of clothes, jewelry, shoes, and coats. I LOVED it! I couldn’t help myself, and ended up purchasing a funky pair of jeans and an old sweater vest. We stopped at an Indian restaurant for lunch and I confessed it was my first time consuming Indian food. I got the chicken curry, though after tasting the butter chicken, I wished I would have ordered that. My final rating: 7.5/10. Indian food is good, but I don’t think I will go out of my way to order it in the future. We also frequented a few 100 Montaditos, which is basically a Spanish fast food place with tiny sandwiches for only one euro each. Not the kind of food I was expecting to eat in Madrid, but it was cheap, so it will work for now.
Today was spent catching up on sleep and buying a few more things for our house. I have decided that buying a real house in my future will be a lot more work than I thought. There are so many little things we want to buy, but won’t necessarily use very often, so we held ourselves back today. We have a short week coming up since I now only have three days of work to complete before it’s the weekend again. The boys’ and I are thinking of going to Sevilla this next weekend, but we will need to plan things better this time. Stay tuned.
Hasta luego!
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