El Tigre y La Fontana de Oro

Bar hopping all night until the morning, churros con chocolate in the early morning, and more until the 6am Metro home - that is the infamous Madrid nightlife. So of course we had to do it at least once...in the first week.

We waited until about 11pm to head out and redeem ourselves from our failures the first night and get drinks/dinner at El Tigre. It was super crowded. Drinks were huge but came with basically endless tapas that were pretty good. More people joined up later on. While ordering at El Tigre there were 2 very tall and loud women (possibly transvestites) being quite obnoxious, saying things like "Este bar es para putas, solas putas!" Meanwhile the people around us would just tell us "Estan locas." The trannies then got into a bit of an argument, but still stayed until by the time we left so they had a good time. Next stop whatever bar we heard was cool.

La fontana de oro. Whose name also could have been McKinley's, or Finnegans, or Finbar's cuz it looked straight up like an "irish" pub, just like any of the given pubs around every corner. Music was pumpin, very Euro not heavy on the beats. The hardest song was probably Black Eyed Peas "Pump it." So many people, so many creeper guys trying to hit on all the girls. Again, we stick out like sore thumbs - a group of Americanos dancing in a bar where not that many people are wildly dancing...

4:30am - At this point some people have drifted away. I decided to stick around with the roommates until we left for churros. This is also when the excitement wore off and I just observed, and tried to stay away from the random drunk guys.

International Encounters - several people we encountered throughout the night included 2 guys studying here from Mexico, a few asianos studying in Bristol but really from UC Berkeley, A random middle aged, and very opinionated, man from Tel Aviv, some people from northern Spain also studying nearby. I'm continuing to find endless diversity here, which I appreciate, for certain.

5:30-ish: Chocolateria San Gines was definitely packed. We sure weren't the only ones who pulled an all-nighter and decided to end it with some churros, which were again very delicious.

6:45 - Heading back to the apartment, all I wanted to do was shower, sleep, and later figure out how to get the smoke smell our of my jeans and jacket. All in all it was an interesting night. But one that definitely is not meant to be repeated on a regular basis.