"Did you say YOLO?"

...Asked Stella when I justified my need for legendary chocolate ice cream from San Ginés. (Parents & Grandma, yolo means "You only live once.")

Me & Toof, my new friend, don't want to leave

September 26, Tuesday

I decide to make our last day in Madrid a Fat Tuesday. I don't eat, sleep or drink at home the way I do on vacation, and all I keep thinking is, "After today, it's all water & broccoli." I love water & broccoli, but I'm swimming in the best wine & pork in the world, as far as I'm concerned. I gotta go big. 

My Fat Tuesday comes to a premature end when I pass out for a long afternoon nap after two glasses of wine and ice cream. The nap is pretty luxurious, so I guess you could consider it a different form of gluttony- it feels fantastic. 

We spend our last evening at a small dinner party at Will and Maria's house. I bask in the excellent food and conversation. I have such an incredible crush on our friends and I'm so grateful to Stella for sharing them with me. It's wonderful to feel so completely at home with new friends. 

Magic Hour Madrid

I'm in absolute denial about leaving Madrid tomorrow. I have to be at the airport before dawn and, besides packing this morning and using the "last day" excuse to overdrink & eat, I'm not acknowledging the future. Stella and I stay at Will & Maria's until...

September 27, Wednesday

... and finally leave in a flurry of hugs and kisses. I'm going to miss them. 

I sleep for a whole two hours before I catch my cab to the airport. I have a full fifteen minute conversation with my cab driver all in Spanish, and I'm now determined to up my Spanish game. When you see me in real life, ask me to say something in Spanish so I can practice.  

It's so goddamned early and I'm so goddamned delirious, I video myself a lot online. I no longer have Stella around to stop me from overposting on social media because her flight leaves this afternoon so she's still asleep at the flat. (Just kidding, she never asked me to stop, bless her heart. But I did try to spare her unless I really couldn't help myself.)

Aw hell, the sun is JUST coming up

After three hours of waiting in the terminal, we board. Then we wait on the tarmac for two additional hours because weather at Gatwick is too foggy to land. Gatwick?? I thought I was flying into Heathrow!!?

Boy, was I wrong. Doesn't matter. Just THANK GOD I downloaded the rest of Season Four of The Originals. By the time we finally take off, I'm quietly sobbing to myself because Julie Plec's series have The. Best. Season. Finales. Ever. 

Life is SO GOOD

Also? I get an empty middle seat!! This is huge because I didn't make my seat assignments until yesterday. Now, is there any way I am lucky enough to sit next to an empty seat for both legs of my flight home?

Spoiler, THERE IS. I AM. I DO. 

On flight #2, I sit next to the window and meditate on the empty middle seat next to me. I pray, then I hold space, then I make peace with "what is", then I distract myself with Spanish lessons, then I practice gratitude for "what is". I sweat and I scheme and I get high on trying to control seating assignments with my mind. 

I don't know if it was a specific meditation I did or if it was how long I procrastinated in calling the airline to make my seat requests, but I get the space I want and I feel so insanely lucky and grateful. For the seats, for my journey, for the Loves who support me, for Stella, for The Originals and Bojack Horseman seasons I downloaded and devoured, for my health, for every way I can stop and be in moments and feel the joy and thrill and fight and freedom and peace that is my life. 

Thanks to any and all who followed along and I'll see y'all on the next one. ☺️

Plaza Mayor, all of the lights

La Latina

Scenes from the hood

Sky popcorn

No sleep, jet lagged, stuck in rush hour
and happy to be home

"Meat sweats..."

...Stella groans when I ask her if she's okay because she looks a little peaked. We have just shared the most incredible, richest meal in Madrid so far at Juana La Loca, culminating with a steak burger that was so decadent it gave Stella the 'meat sweats'.

Churros & HOT chocolate

September 25, Monday

A new home brings new opportunities. Mine is the opportunity for back pain. The couch bed is not great. But we're back in our own space on our own time and we're rested. 

Since we left Menorca I've been quizzing Stella on what she wants to do and see in Madrid: museums, monuments, markets?? See a show, find a park, take a day trip?? Go clubbing, eat gelato, souvenir shopping?? 

I've been to Madrid a few times and seen all the big sights so I'm graciously giving the reins to Stella and letting her be in charge, for once, of my schedule. The thing is, she's been very demure about her personal list of things to do and see in Madrid, and when I hound her will respond, "I'll look up some things." 

Werking Calle de Toledo

This morning Stella reveals we have no agenda. She just wants to wander and be and soak up the city. I remind her about how stressed out having no agenda makes me. 

"I know," she replies. 

No agenda it is. It's lovely. Within our no agenda day, she lets me mini-plan and  navigate the foreseeable future ("Churros & chocolate, then we can walk toward the pasta place, then look for my face soap, then shoes...") which scratches my control itch. 

Highlights from a No Agenda Day:

-Chocolateria San Ginés for churros & chocolate. They've been using the same chocolate recipe since 1894! Though I preferred Cafe Fútbol's chocolate in Granada, I still got goosebumps. 

-By accident, Stella and I go to La Bola, a restaurant opened since 1870 that features

traditional Madrileño cooking. We thought we were getting pasta at a place our friends recommended with a name that also started with a B and had similar vowels (turns out it was Ouh Babbo, not La Bola). We get gazpacho and a stew and it's effing fantastic!

-Impromptu photo shoot in front of Plaza Mayor is rad. 

-I finally get my espadrilles and they BLOW MY MIND. I love these shoes. 

-Stella and I find this random feminist bookstore and spend forever inside combing through everything they sell. Stella buys gifts for friends, I buy gifts for myself. 

-Dinner at Juana La Loca, a tapas place Maria recommended to us. It's our best meal in Madrid, starring Stella's "meat sweats" burger and a dulce de leche volcano that takes an hour to cook. We eat til we're suicidal, and now I'm craving a vegetarian diet. 

Tomorrow is somehow our last day. I feel like we've got a whole lifetime left here. 

You...

Better...

WERK.

Dulce de leche, so good I could cry.

Stella blissing out at first bite.

Hello my loves...

"It's a Bitch Fly."

...I translate when Will explains the nearly-indestructable fly it took us four adults to kill, using a shoe, sewing needles, and finally scissors, is called mosca perrera.

I took a picture of this same man 18 years ago

September 22-24, Friday to Sunday
Stella and I deposit our bags early at our Madrid flat and plan to wander the city for the next hour until we're allowed to officially check into our new place. We text our friends Maria and Will to let them know we're in town and walk the streets of La Latina. 

I'm happy to be in Madrid, but I'm exhausted from a strong-coffee-on-an-empty-stomach-induced sleepless night. Everything feels hazy and surreal. Will calls us back and invites us to The Mill (their country home) for the weekend- they're leaving in an hour, can we make it to their car park by then?

I wake up. Madrid is wonderful, but The Mill is heaven. Legitimate heaven. I want to spend eternity at The Mill. 

AMAZING WEATHER!!!!!!

Stella and I jump at the opportunity and race home through Madrid streets to pack a weekend bag. We meet our landlord back at our flat and fumble through a confusing Spanglish conversation of "yes we're checking in today, but we're early because we're leaving town, but we're still paying even though we won't be here for a few days," that eats precious time of the now-fifteen minutes we have to pack, taxi to the car park, and find Will and Maria. Stella packs one bag, I cram random needful things into FOUR bags and we run outside to find a cab. 

We find Will & Maria rolling their luggage through the plaza and somehow everything works out perfectly. We pick up their daughter, Dafne, from school and head to the country. 

In the middle of chocolate passing between the back and front seats and Maria and Dafne tag-team telling stories, the sky clouds to near black. Dafne remarks, "We won't be hiking this evening." I check the weather and there is no sign of rain, so I hold out hope for a twilight hike. 

After the storm

It starts raining. We raise our voices to be heard over the sound of the water. It gets incredibly loud. I roll down the window and stick out my hand- the temperature has dropped at least 20 degrees and it's hailing! Out of nowhere the street is blanketed with white. Will pulls over and we take turns sticking our hands out the windows to collect cherry-sized hail. The weather drama borders on biblical, as lightening streaks across the sky. 

We crawl down the highway until the weather recedes. Lightening and thunder stay with us for the rest of the trip but the hail stops. Despite the lightening, the clouds part and, incredibly, a clear blue sky shines through. It makes for a stunning trip!

Picking blackberries

We arrive at The Mill and I couldn't be happier. After traveling for the last few weeks and all the planning and moving and navigating, I'm exhausted. Putting our lives in someone else's hands for a couple of days feels decadent. 

Decadent and nourishing. Day 1 Stella, me and the family pick tons of blackberries. By Day 2 Dafne has turned half the blackberries into jam while Will turns the other half into ice cream, and we devour all of it. All we do for the duration of our stay is eat incredible homemade food, laugh at each other's stories, discuss art and politics, play with the kids in the plaza and take hikes. See? Heaven. 

A few quick highlights of the trip besides all of the above:

-We visit salt mines built in the 10th century. They were some of the most productive in Spain until they closed in 1996. It was nothing I'd ever seen before, huge crystals of salt growing (or however it does) to cover rocks. I taste some right off the ground- salty!

Skateboarding! Celebrating skateboarding!

-Dafne and her friends are obsessed with slo-mo filming which inspires some incredible running, jumping, throwing, and skateboarding videos and belly laughs.

-I skateboard on a two-wheel Wave board for over seven seconds. The last, and only, time I was ever on a skateboard, I was 8 years old and I fell off immediately. Lasting as long as I do is BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS. Seriously.

-Will and Maria's neighbor have the most incredible garden. She grows everything and well. Stella basks in it as her soul's happy place. I follow the rows of food, astonished and in awe of all the food.

-We hike Santamera, a gorge bordering a small town. Spain has been in a terrible drought, so it is especially alarming for our hosts to see the river is gone and the lake has dried to almost nothing. We scale the bank and run around the lake bed, making wishes on the rising new moon.

Abandoned village

-We hike to an abandoned village and explore the broken buildings. I don't know why I love ruined buildings, but I do. We see graffiti carved into the facade of one of the buildings from 1770. This particular town went dry not too long ago, because Maria knows the last gentleman to have lived here. Once water was no longer able to reach it, the town died and nature overtook it. 

Sunday late afternoon we drive back to Madrid. Stella and I settle into our new Air Bnb. We haven't showered in two days, we're both exhausted and I'm still feeling a bit carsick from the return trip. We hit a cute tapas place recommended by our hosts and I become an overtired seven year old. 

God bless Stella for knowing how to deal with me. As I sit across from her with watery eyes feeling nauseated, overstimulated and distraught about ordering chicken fingers, Stella orders some water for me and soft-talks me off the ledge. By the time we receive the chicken fingers, I'm all better. 

And they're delicious. 

Lunch on the rocks in Santamera

I've never seen clouds go THIS black before

Wild blackberries, family-picked

Future ice cream on the left, future jam on the right

Gorgeous, yummy, homemade, organic ice cream...

...and JAM!!

Stella's dream garden

This is where watermelons come from

Salt mine beauty

Doomed ant on a stunning landscape

We're playing at the bottom of the lake

Church in the abandoned town

Sunflower season is over, but sunflowers still stand tall offering their seeds. I ATE SUNFLOWER SEEDS OUT OF A REAL SUNFLOWER AND THIS WAS HER.

"I need to take off my pants and lie on this cold floor..."

...I say to Stella at dawn in the Madrid airport because I'm so tired that I'm nauseous and sweating. 

Bianca's dream home

Sunday: I have another chocolate breakfast. Dafne takes me and Stella on a walk to another nearby village while her parents and Luís pack up and close the house. 

Dafne is just like her parents in that she's a perfect guide, full of fascinating information about the area. She shows us the house I want to live in forever- it's built into the ground to look like a cresting wave of grass. One side and the roof is grass and the opposite side is all windows.  It's got gardens, a guest house and stables and a corral which means when I move in, I'll be able to have horses!

Dungeon door

Before we head to Madrid, Dafne shows us their dungeon. Their house is actually a mill from the 15th century and it still contains all the ancient hardware which extends down into the cellar. Of course, I fall in love with the dungeon. 

Inner dungeon

As we drive out of Sigüenza, we have to stop for the Easter procession as the town carries a resurrected Christ in reverence. No pictures, but I'm really happy we got to see the end of the story. 

The family drops Stella and me off at the Prado so we can squeeze in some art before we have to leave tomorrow. It's amazing, because world renowned art is, particularly Goya's Black Period and the Rubens. However, I don’t know if its because its Easter, but it seems like every other work of art is a crucifixion. Thank God Jesus had resurrection talents. 

Stella waits for me outside the Prado

I also notice a lot of torture and killing of women. I have an “Aha!” moment when I see maybe the fifteenth Adam & Eve representation, and I burst out to Stella, “That’s why men hate women! Because they blame us for everything bad because of Adam and Eve!” Stella’s reply was along the lines of, “Yeah. Duh…” I continue: “But I bet they made it all up because they were scared and jealous of what women could do with their bodies, so they had to minimize us to try and control us!” This earns another, “Yeah, duh.” type confirmation from Stella.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Or why this finally hits home right now. I’m not a total moron, I’ve been a living female for over forty one years - and by the way, my dislike of writing my age in print makes me want to vomit, thanks society, thanks Patriarchy, and fuck you both - but lately I feel like I’m seeing the world for the first time. So I guess I’m woke…? Which is also a phrase that makes me want to puke, less because of the millennial-ness of it all and more because I’m privileged enough to have been sleeping in denial, complacency, and ignorance. Which reminds me, I haven’t had my Lexapro today. 

A breath-taking sculpture of
mother & child by Maria

All my wokeness, plus the holiday crowds and being exhausted means we leave the Prado early to walk back to Maria & Will's flat. The city is much busier than I thought it would be on Easter. I'd imagined Madrid would be completely shut down in recognition of the holiday, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Because they also observe Easter Monday, Easter Sunday in the city feels like a big party. 

We make it to Will & Maria's flat without getting lost once, and I fall in love. I love Maria's taste and their home is my dream. What's incredible about spending time with Will, Maria and Dafne is they are a family of artists. Not only actors and Director's, but artists. Art is their life and it's expressed in how they live their lives, as well. It feels like home to be in an environment that values the things I value most in my life: reading, discovery, expression, creativity, beauty, space. 

Finally, paella!

Maria has arranged a flamenco show for dinner so we take a quick tour around their neighborhood on the way to the restaurant. Stella and I linger before a closed shoe shop with windows full of beautiful espadrilles. Maria casually mentions that store makes the best espadrilles in the country and it’s too bad we fly out before they open tomorrow. Stella and I agree. If we didn't have a good reason to return to Madrid, we have the perfect one now. We love a good espadrille. 

Nefi & Nefi-colored nails

In two different spots on our way to dinner, I step into a plaza and it feels so familiar. Then I find a landmark and each time realize I stood in the exact spot 18 years ago on my first trip to Europe. My recall sucks, but it's nice to know Spain burned itself into my soul enough for my body to remember until my brain catches up. 

Nefi kisses. I win. 

Now, flamenco. I bow to flamenco. I saw it years ago, but I've never seen it like this. I take no pictures. Every step, every snap echoes in my synapses and jams my mind so I can't do anything but feel these dancers pound out their individual rhythms and ride the Spanish guitar. I insist you fly to Madrid and go to Las Carboneras to experience God for yourself. Until then, here's a YouTube video- especially after 1:45 watch and have your mind blown. 

Spain Starbucks ftw

Maria says the best time to experience flamenco is after the restaurants and shows close when all the musicians and dancers meet at an after hours bar to jam together. Right then, I promise myself that we really will be back and we’ll be there.

Nefi finally sleeps with me - and not only because I locked her in with me - and give me cuddles. We only get a few hours of sleep before we have to leave Will and Maria’s for the airport. Once we check in (again, WE ARE SO EARLY), the fatigue hits and I can’t wait to get London-home. 

Creek POV of the dungeon...

When I move to Spain, I definitely want a wall & door combo. They're my favorite. 

Stella strolls past Lady Art

I love her.