San Isidro Labrador - the patron saint of Madrid, who died May 15th, 1130. Though Spaniards, especially Madrileños, aren't especially religious anymore they damn sure celebrate May 15th in a BIG way.
Las Vistillas - Apparently the place to be at (during the daytime anyway) is this park, so of course roomies and friends decided to hit that place up. Imagine a huge carnival with drinking and spanish foods with thousands upon thousands of people. It was even complete with strange humongo foods, like perritos completos (huge hot dog with fried onion bits, pickles, french fries) and salchicha papas con salsa (French Fries with hotdog slices and sauce). Don't worry there was good stuff there too, we just didn't eat any of it.
Best part of the day is that people dress up like they did back in the day. Women with pretty mantones, semi-flamenco style dresses, and the guys in vests and hats. Everyone with a carnation. Including cutie little kids!! We definitely had our fill of creeper pics of the kids.
Later in the night we headed out to Gran Via, no real plans just figured something big was going on. We were more than right. At 10:30pm the metro was packed, all of us getting off at the same place, as the train PASSED Gran Via. Apparently they had closed it off...So we got off at the next stop and walked through the IMMENSE crowd of people crowded in Gran Via. The whole street was apparently closed off to traffic and covered in blue carpet. That's a lot of carpet.
We made our way to what happened to be a convenient spot cuz it was next to a stage with some singers performing older Spanish songs. After that we realized that we just so happened to be in front of the Telefonica building, a Madrid landmark on which they planned to have 3-D projections on it, a special spectacle for San Isidro and the 100th year of Gran Via. It was so amazing, I wish I could have taped all of it but highlight moments were the speakers near the end, the frickin' robot and KING KONG, as if he was really climbing on the building. SICK
So that was definitely worth going out that night. But again we found ourselves standing around afterwards saying "OK what do we do now?" Cue fireworks. Fireworks - in a metropolitan city. So awesome.
The crowd dissipated a little, we took a few pics then headed over to El Tigre for some drinks and free tapas, of course. We ended up missing the last metro, but then we figured out that Gran Via eventually turns into Princesa, the main street parallel to ours.
Walking down the blue carpet all the way down Gran Via. Not a star in the sky. Enjoying the cool night breeze among the thousands of others hanging around Gran Via, who most likely had little plans of going home anytime soon. At some point we start singing and translating songs from "Chicago" in Spanish, "Y todo eso jazz."
All in all the night was successful. For once timing seemed just right for our time here in Madrid. Too bad its only coming in during our last few weeks of the program. One of the songs that we watched the performers sang earlier was pretty catchy. I found a new modern version of it that just so happens to be used for the tourism campaign for Madrid. It is steadily becoming my theme song for my time being here.
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