two and a third americans in spain

spain! we are finally here! it took quite a bit of traveling and finding our way, but we are here and loving every minute of it. the trip was not bad, except that with the timing of it all we weren´t able to sleep on the flight. and as it seems always happens to us when we travel, we ran into an s.f. private bar attorney on our flight, who was visiting her boyfriend´s family! i swear, the world really is so small.

we arrived in madrid early on sunday and went straight for the churros y chocolate - deep fried unsweetened dough dipped in warm chocolate the consistency of pudding. yum! slept a LOT in the afternoon (i am LOVING the siesta, by the way) and then went out to a bullfight. now that was an experience. i have seen two other bullfights, one here in spain and the other in mexico. they don´t particularly bother me, in the PETA/animal loving sense, but after seeing this one i really think i see the point. it may just be my super sensitive stomach right know due to the recent addition to my belly, but i was competely grossed out by the fight. to the point where i sat with my jaw dropped open, completely unable to say or do anything but stare at the scene in front of me. i will not get into the gory details, but i now know why you always want to see a champion bullfighter - one who knows how to take the bull down with one sweep of the sword. let me just say that one of the three we watched couldn´t really make things happen until about the fourth or fifth time. and even after that, one of his cronies had to come over to put a stop to the madness. i think jim and i agree that we will probably never see another bullfight. but i have to say, the ring is beautiful and the years of tradition really show through in the way in which the fighters do their thing. the costumes are gorgeous, and it was neat to feal a part of the madrileño culture for an afternoon, sitting there, yelling at the fighters, eating our pistachios and keeping cool in the shade.

we spent another day in madrid, seeing picasso´s guernica and other sights. jim and i are convinced that we will someday retire to a place like madrid. we made this decision after visiting a grocery store by our hotel. that place was awesome! an entire section of spanish cheese. a row 15 feet long of sausage. beautiful produce. a meat counter that would put any i´ve ever seen to shame. i am not sure, but i really think jim had a spiritual experience there.

but en serio, madrid really has everything we love in a city. culture, amazing food, warm people, the language, good weather - i could go on and on. and it was a wonderful place to live during college, but of course for other reasons. these people party! they really know how to have a good time! at any time of day you can find madrileños hanging out and sipping a cerveza, chatting with friends. the streets are packed at 12 midnight, and everyone is just coming home from the night out around the time most of us get up for work in the morning. i am just in complete awe of the spanish lifestyle. and as for a pregnant traveler, spain rocks! you get a 2-3 hour nap in the middle of the day for nothing! and there are restrooms everywhere that are spotless! food is served in small little portions, so you eat basically all day. i am certainly missing the wines and pigging out on all of the cheese and jamon serrano i can eat, but this is a great place for me!

so from madrid we traveled to cordoba this afternoon. we had a little situation in the train station when we learned that our train tickets were not actually purchased on the internet, but were only reserved on the internet and were cancelled when we didn´t call 3 days later. what? we (thought) we bought ALL of our tickets online, including those for the overnight trains to and from barcelona. guess not. and guess what? of course they are now all booked, since august is the month in which all spaniards travel. so we had a mini meltdown and decided that we will likely be changing our plans from here! i think we will bag barcelona, since we´ve both already been, and hit portugal instead. at this point, we have all of our hotels reserved but no way of getting there, so we are kind of free to do whatever we want. i am actually really excited - i would love to see portugal!

so anyway, we are in cordoba and it is hotter than hades but beautiful. it has a moorish influence that we will see more of tomorrow. the streets are narrow, with cobblestones, and the buildings are very close together. lots of tourists, but i can see why, things are so gorgeous here. now we are headed out for tapas and to see this city´s nightlife!