Mamá y los Tíos

Once again I am here late and I have gotten quite bored of apologising, so I shan’t. Look at me, dropping my English manners and stuff – according to the guys in the studio I am españolizando – meaning becoming Spanish in my ways. Anyway, on with the news…

I was recently joined by more of my family here in Madrid, after my dad’s visit a good few weeks back, when my mum, auntie and uncle drove up from my auntie’s flat down in Murcia (south of Spain) to visit the city for a few days. I met them at my local Metro stop, Ópera, and we were soon out and about in the city having tinto de verano (a bit like sangría) and a good old catch up.

Unfortunately we had a super busy day at work with client meetings galore, so they couldn’t drop by the Erretres studio, but we were sure to go out for lunch and take a wander round the city, exploring all that it had to offer.

In the evenings we headed back to where they were all staying down in the south of the city, which I thought was a bit of a pain as I live towards the north, however I managed to sneak into the hotel which meant that ever evening we were able to head to a tiny local bar in the district and get some authentic and super cheap tapas and drinks away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Whilst there I acted as translator, and we had a lovely time chatting to the guys at the bar and munching our way through some delicious tapas, including lots of friend seafood which my mum was very brave to try! We enjoyed it so much that one evening we stopped by for our main dinner…

I really don’t have much else to report on their visit, as we spent most of our time trawling around bars and chatting and catching up and resting! After a round of farewells on Line 1 of the metro, they were soon on their way back to the south and I decided to have a relaxing few days, exploring the area around my new flat down by the river…

I recently moved in with a lovely mother and son duo here down by Madrid’s one and only river, and I have a fabulously spacious room with a gorgeous balcony view (above) set in a lovely peaceful neighbourhood. I recently picked up Khaled Hosseini’s masterpiece A Thousand Splendid Suns, so one evening I thought I’d take it down by the river (which you can just make out the edge of on the photo above) to relax and get lost in the pages.

I didn’t actually get that much chance to do my spot of reading once I was down there though, as I was taken in by the amazing views towards the royal cathedral and the general relaxing ambience of the riverbanks. I do thoroughly recommend the book, however – I recently finished it and I had to take a good few minutes to fully compose myself once I’d finished. Find out more about it here.

I also spent an hour or so visiting one of Madrid’s big tourist pulls, but something I am not too interested in personally not being a fan of football, the home of Real Madrid – Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. I was quite impressed by the sheer scale and brutalism of the building when I arrived, and with it being Sunday I didn’t get chance to go inside, but here’s a couple of pics for anyone who might be interested…

Other than that I haven’t much news – work is busy busy busy and I have been spending any free time relaxing and tidying my flat! I have sorted my next flat out for after Abi & Danni’s visit – which I just revealed as Danni’s surprise 21st birthday present! There is a little bit of good and bad news though – starting with the sad news that Thuy has recently left work at Erretres to pursue new exciting things. Here’s a photo of the table of dreams in the studio!

The good news, however, is that I went to a park and there was lots of daisies so obviously I gathered as many as I could and made a daisy chain crown and walked home pretending I was Lana Del Rey. Yes.

Oh my gosh, look! It’s Lana del Rey!