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Published: December 20th 2008
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So I finally left Paris for a weekend! My friend Mandy had her friend, Daniel, visiting from Canada and the three of us decided to go to Madrid for the weekend. It was really nice to get out of Paris for a bit. I was shocked, however, at how polluted Madrid was. I felt that I could taste the pollution in the air. After that, and coming back to Paris, I am really starting to miss the clean BC air.
The first day in Madrid we didn’t get out to the city until the evening. When we did get downtown, we walked down Gran Via street and saw some great things. Then we went for tapas dinner and decided to catch a movie. We decided to go see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Wow, what a great movie. It was super fun. The next day we had a bit of a late start and mostly shopped in the afternoon and bought tickets for La Bella y La Bestia (the Beauty and the Beast). It was so great. The costumes, performers voices, orchestra, all of it, was very, very well done. I really enjoyed the chance to work on my Spanish too. I
liked being the translator for everyone, because in Paris it is usually the other way around.
The following day Mandy and Daniel had to fly back because we accidentally booked our tickets wrong. I really didn’t mind because we had not done as much sight seeing as I would have liked, so I had the day to myself to explore the city. The only negative factor was the fact that is was snowing a little bit in the morning, but the rest of the day it was pouring rain. Of course I didn’t think to bring my umbrella, but after getting soaked for a while I gave up and bought a three euro umbrella. I liked checking out the city, but by the evening my jeans were drenched up the back of my calves to my knee. And to make matters a little worse, our hotel was a ½ hour metro ride outside of the downtown core. I knew that if I went back to the hotel to dry off, I would likely talk myself into not going out again and I didn’t want to waste my last night in Madrid. So I decided to duck into a movie
theatre (I know, again, movied out for a bit, lol) to sit for a couple of hours and hope to dry off. I saw Blueberry Nights, it was alright. When it was over it was around 8 pm and it had finally stopped raining. I wandered around for a bit more and decided that I was still wet and tired of being cold so I would find a cute little place to have a glass of wine and some food and then head back.
Down this little side street I found this amazing little jazz tapas bar. I sat at the bar, in hopes that I may make a friend. I talked for a bit with some people from Seville. After they left I made friends with a guy that was a singer in Spain. He knew the bartender because the bartender was an actor and then his other actor friend showed up and we sat and hung out for a while. It turned out to be a really fun night and I really got to practice my Spanish, which was great.
The next day, I was a little surprised at myself for feeling happy to be going
home and thinking of Paris as home.
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Jennifer Barr
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I want to go to a tapas jazz bar, although I have no spanish to practice. Isaac doesn't believe me that those carollers are made of chocolate.