uptempodemonplumsauce: "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.