My first 24 hours in Madrid have been so amazing. True sensory overload. Upon arriving, Sri and I located our hotel in the heart of the Puerta del Sol, right above Zara (for my fellow friends who shop with me in Vancouver, you must appreciate that). We immediately crashed. We were oh so tired from the long plane ride. We woke up around mid-afternoon and headed to the Plaza Mayor where we basked in the sun, sipping a café and eating some paella and croquetas de jamón. We then wandered around a bit more..and soon learned that there was a Real Madrid game in town that night...at 10 pm. Crazy huh? Well, that would explain all the Brits we´d been seeing on the streets. So we decided to take a chance and headed over to the Estadio Santiago Bernabeau to see if we could score some tickets. One hour later, 55 euros poorer each, we had tickets in hand. I grabbed a bocadillo de jamón from a random restaurant and we toasted to our first evening with a Mahou each. Gametime. Oh--it was so much fun. And we saw Beckham! Very fun game. Unfortunately, Real Madrid lost to Mallorca, 2-3. After the game, we meandered back to the hotel...by this point, it was somewhere between midnight and 1am. But in true Madrileño fashion, around 2am, we headed back out again to experience la marcha. We went barhopping until the bars closed around 3am...and then we went to a discoteca since they were finally opened...an Indian-themed one called Samsara. We danced the night away until about 5:30am...and here I am now, 6:02am, back at the hotel. Wow. It´s been awhile since I´ve gone dancing so late...but it was ooooh so much fun with Sri. We had a blast.



Let´s see how late we sleep in tomorrow. It´s museum day for us.