Luisa & Woody in Madrid

With this post I’m back in Spain after two weeks of absence, as mentioned in my last post – and all this means that I’ve to bring you all up to speed with what’s been going on over the past crazy fortnight! After returning from Murcia and working my final week at work before my summer holidays, I was joined in the city by Luisa and Woody, who’d come over principally for the MadCool festival.

The night they arrived, though, I was sure to grab hold of them to watch England get kicked out of the World Cup and take them to one of my favourite spots for a drink and some croquettes. We had a lovely catch up as I introduced them to cañas, and the not-so-sophisticated Madrid tradition of mixing beer with lemon Fanta…

The two of them then spent the next few days in and out of the festival, but I was sure to meet up with them after work a couple of times when possible in order to show them some cool areas of the city. We checked out Malasaña, Lavapiés, La Latina, and plenty of the centre, all whist stopping for beers and tapas along the way of course – there’s no other way of doing it here!

The weekend also signalled one of the last opportunities to hang out with Heidi, the last member of Cake Club to abandon me in Madrid after Megan and Loredana left a few weeks back. On Saturday night we headed out for drinks at Sala Equis, a converted adult cinema, and then found a lovely Asturian restaurant to stuff ourselves on chorizo cooked in cider and other northern delights!

The day after, exactly two weeks ago today, the festival was all over and so I met up with Luisa, Woody and Heidi for some drinks down in Lavapiés, before we headed out to Chueca to spend their last evening together.

The next day, Woody had to leave back to Manchester, but Lu had planned to stay a few extra days at mine. Once we’d waved Woody off on the metro, we dropped Luisa’s stuff off at mine and spent a couple of days wandering, exploring, and eating plenty!

During those mere 48 hours we got up to all sorts of nonsense, just wandering around and eating and drinking and taking photos of whatever we felt like, and so I can’t honestly really remember exactly what we did. What I do remember is that come Wednesday morning it was time to wave Luisa off on the metro too, just hours before I had to leave my flat myself!

Where I went next though will have to wait for the next blog post, as I’m having a day of rest and there’s so much to report back on from my road trip of the north and week in England that I’ll have to break the whole trip down into sections and post them as and when I get the time. Prepare yourselves for plenty of photos!