A Blonde in Madrid

Hola! Over the past two weekends I've had some authentic Spanish adventures with Zara and her family. Two weekends ago, they took me bowling. Zara's dad is in the military and so we went to the air force base bowling alley. During Franco's dictatorship the States had a military presence in Spain and this air force base was built by Americans, hence the bowling alley (and American toilets!). It smelled just like an American bowling alley when we walked in...cigarettes, beer, and pizza. As I hadn't gone bowling since 8th grade I was pretty rusty and only beat Zara's 12 year old cousin by a few points. I don't think anyone who is reading this is surprised that I'm bad at bowling. It was a lot of fun though and we had a lot of laughs (particularly after it was my turn). After our game, we got Cokes and several big bags of chips and sat and talked with Zara's family, killing time before our 9:00 dinner reservation...at a Chinese restaurant. I thought it was funny to be eating Chinese food in Spain for some reason, especially when the waitress brought out big jugs of sangria to go along with our meal. It was quite the feast though and very fun company! When we finished eating Vicente ordered shots for everyone. After a toast, he turned to me and said, "Patterson when your parents come they're going to think we're drunks!" 

This past weekend I went to Salamanca again with the Mateos clan. We left on Saturday afternoon and arrived in time to have lunch with Zara's grandma. She was precious! However, she kept speaking to me in German all weekend. We never quite figured out why. We had huge sandwiches on bread from a wood fired oven down the street, and big bowls of chocolate pudding for dessert. After lunch we had our siesta and coffee and watched the Pink Panther movie. After the movie Zara and I took a long walk around Salamanca and then later met up with her parents for some wine and tapas. We went to a really cute cafe that had pictures up of the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and Natalie Portman eating there. I wish they had been there when we were! A TV in the restaurant showed a clip of the President of the Spanish government and Zara groaned about hating him. I asked about his political party and she immediately said "Don't say that!" "Say what?!" She told me that you never talk about politics in public..."you could offend someone!" Oops.

Zara and I then went back to her grandma's house to have dinner. Her grandmother was just like you Granny...I think she made me eat about 14 croquetas. After dinner, we watched the Spanish version of Dancing with the Stars, "Mira Quien Baila." Around 11:30 I fell asleep on the couch and was woken up about a half hour later by Zara telling me to get ready because it was time to go out.  When we arrived at our first club around 1 am I knew I was in for a long night. We left the first club around 4 am and I assumed it was to go home. However, after about 5 minutes of walking Zara informed me we were heading to another disco. We stayed there until about 5:15. When we left I thought for sure that this time it would be to go home. I was wrong. We arrived at our third disco around 5:30. At this point I couldn't fake it, I was dead tired and I don't think I cracked a smile from then until we finally fell into bed around 7 am.   

All of Zara's friends thought I was from England so they wanted to get this picture with the colors of my flag. Right colors, wrong country. 

On Sunday afternoon we met Zara's friend Sara at the Plaza Mayor and went to a cafe for my first (finally!!) churros con chocolate. They definitely didn't disappoint! 

It was a great weekend and I enjoyed spending time with Zara and her family. However, I'm not sure I'll be staying out till 7 am with Zara anymore...I'm an American.