A Life in Waiting

On Friday morning I took to the city alone.  Kris had plans for the day and I try to give myself a walking tour of every city I go to.  As for someone who never was a large walker, I have really found that it truly is the best way to discover new places.  The bike works great for traveling to the cities, but is best left somewhere to patiently wait for me until I’m ready to leave.  When you walk a city, you can get an immediate read on the type of place you’re in.  And the people watching that you can do is priceless.

Whenever I do end up walking a city, I typically don’t carry a map or have a set agenda.  It kills the mood and it defeats my purposes for traveling.  I don’t really need to see every church, museum or national monument as every city has dozens and they all start looking the same after a while.  I am more interested In the culture.  How people live.  How they spend their time.  Are they happy or just going through the routines as we are all programmed to?  Well Madrid was alive.  People everywhere seemed to be happy, friendly and helpful even if they don’t know their own city to well.  (Directions to particular streets tend to come up lacking, not out of lack of desire, just lack of knowledge of the many confusing names all through the city) 

As confusing as Madrid is to drive in, it becomes quite basic in layout once you start exploring it.  Beautiful architecture deep rooted in history, a cleanliness that didn’t border on sanitized, and plenty of lively tapas bars that really just have a great feeling to them (not to mention dirt cheap!).  I spent around 5 hours walking the city and testing a few different tapas selections and headed back towards my host’s home.

After letting my feet take a breather, Kris cooks dinner and informs me that we’re meeting a few friends of hers out in the city that evening.  So we get cleaned up and take a walk through a city that is under a soft glow from the lights of the city, and a nice spring breeze.  We end up at a pretty trendy uptown lounge to get well introduced then head out for what turned out to be a crazy night at a Brazilian pub with live music and plenty of Samba dancing.  Wow, do these people love to dance!  Given there was a rather large Brazilian audience, but everyone was just up and out on the dance floor.  It was so bad that even the guys that had no one to dance with and were sitting off to the side, seem to be unable to control the lower half of their bodies as their legs danced along without their permission.  It was a great night out.  The following morning wasn’t exactly marvelous, but well justified.

After Recovering the following morning, I went out and gave the BMW a much needed bath and once over.  After riding through the rain a few times and then sitting for 6 months next to a heavily trafficked airport road, it was getting pretty funky.  Not to mention that Kris had offered to take some photos of me with the bike to correct the incorrect photo on the header.  After a few hours (it’s pretty tough cleaning a bike without a hose) I got myself cleaned up as well and went out for a quick photo shoot.  After the standard me and bike shots, she headed up onto her balcony as I did a few laps around the block to get a good riding shot.  After confusing all the neighbors with my dozen or so laps around the block, we called it quits.

That evening we ended up meeting a few more of Kris’s friends out in the city for some traditional Spanish cuisine.  However as we all failed to realize that it was a Saturday night, we ended up going to a so-so spot that was too hip on the presentation of the food and allowed the quality/quantity suffer for it.  As it was a Saturday night, the evening ended with a small bar hop to some pretty cool music centered spots that had a strong feeling of a few places I used to frequent in the village.

To be continued…

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