July’s always a busy time when working in Spain, because many companies here withhold the excellent custom of shutting down and affording everyone a decent fortnight of summer holidays in August. While great, this does always cause somewhat of a hectic July, with everyone looking to wrap up projects before the summer holidays begin!

This means a lot of long working days, which means that one must make the very most of any free time, no matter how brief it may be. To this end, a couple of weeks ago Hugo, Jhosef, and I headed up to my office to make the most of the pool in the increasingly oppressive summer heat!

We were quite at home in the lovely spaces of the office.

The three of us boarded a bus in the city centre, bags laden with snacks and drinks for the evening, and made our way up to Pozuelo, the neighbourhood of Madrid in which the office sits. After a quick tour of the many different spaces within the office, we slipped into our swimming gear and began a slow-paced evening of munching, swimming, and sharing all kinds of tales and quips.

Even though I was much more interested in the gin and tonics and various snacks on offer, I do enjoy the odd swim in the pool, and so I instructed Hugo to take some photos of me whilst I did so. That ended up with a rather happy accident, as he managed to hit the shutter button just as I was emerging and the surface tension of the water still hadn’t given way. It’s a horrific photo of me, but I find it quite funny and interesting!

Once the sun began to set, the evening air became a little too cool, and so we sat out the rest of the evening on the roof terrace. There we enjoyed the last of our beers, watched the sun set, and shared a whole tub of ice cream as we chatted about life in Spain. The three of us are all immigrants from other countries, and so it was interesting to hear other perspectives and compare shared experiences.

Back home, I had another busy week in store for me, with my free hours on an evening dedicated to naps, cooking, and throwing my own little “spa evenings”. These are evenings when I activate my new coloured lighting, pour myself a glass of wine, pop on a face mask, and lie on my sofa listening to a special playlist of relaxing music. It does make me feel like I’ve hit some kind of mid-life crisis, but it’s a little indulgence that serves well to de-stress after a long day!

Outside of my flat, my obsession with the city bikes continues, as I’ve been exploring further along the banks of the riverside park which runs through my neighbourhood and up along the west of the city centre. The other night I headed out at about 10pm, which is about the time the daytime heat has become somewhat bearable, and discovered some lovely nighttime scenes along the way, including the Príncipe Pío train station and some trees which were lit up with coloured lights.

Just last weekend, me and Jhosef arranged to meet up in the city centre, as he was keen on taking some long-exposure photos of the Catedral de la Almudena (Madrid’s Cathedral) and the motorways in the north of the city. As per usual, I cycled up to the cathedral, which lies just next door to the Royal Palace, and took a few casual photos of my own.

As the sun set, Jhosef took plenty of lovely photos (check out his Instagram), but I was more wrapped up in taking in the view and munching on a bag of dried seaweed snacks that I’d brought along. We’d taken up position on a hillside street right next to the palace, which offered amazing views (as you can see from the photos) over the cathedral. This all reminded me of the first time I ever visited Madrid, when the cathedral was one of the highlights of my trip. It still amazes me to think that I now live a ten-minute bike ride away from the place.

Once the sun had properly set, we made our way towards the north of the city, deciding to spontaneously stop off once again at the Peruvian restaurant for a meal which included cow’s heart – which, after my initial doubts, was rather delicious! This happened to fall on the 28th of July, which it turns out is the day of Peru’s National Holiday, so I must say: ¡felices fiestas patrias Perú!

The ensuing trip to the northern business district of Madrid to take long-exposure shots of cars turned out to be somewhat of a damp squib, as we arrived way too late and there were hardly any cars circulating. We made the most of the evening, though, and walked back home after encountering a group of conspiracy theorists on the metro who were waffling on about coronavirus being a big government coverup and refusing to wear their masks. Now look, you can hold your own theories by all means, but for peat’s sake just wear a bloody mask. It’s not that hard.

With that little rant over, we arrive at this week, my last week before a few days in Tenerife and Murcia! The other night I headed down to the park for a few beers and to say goodbye to my friends for the time being, and of course one beer turned into three, meaning I arrived home rather tipsy and peckish. This led to me toasting some bread in my oven, tipsily admiring the red-hot heating elements in the dark…

As mentioned, it’s now time for me to round up my blog post, close my laptop, and disconnect as much as possible for the next week as I head off to visit my friends Cami and Sam in the south of Tenerife. Naturally I’ll be taking my camera along, and so there’ll be plenty of photos and stories to come from the lovely island. I just hope I survive the heat!

Happy summer everybody!

It’s now been over two weeks since my last post, but I’ve still been trying to get out of my flat as much as I can. Be it to run errands to IKEA for more coloured lighting or to head out with friends to eat, I’ve been slowly taking back the streets as we head into the height of the Spanish summer!

As you can imagine, though, this same heat can sometimes become rather insufferable, and so I’ve been spending the majority of my afternoons in my flat sleeping the siesta, prepping some food, or cleaning the place in the comfort of the air conditioning. My neighbours seem to be doing the same with their weekends, and so one Saturday I awoke to a flat bathed in the warm glow of the light reflected off the neon-pink towel that they had hung out.

Even the plant that I’d left out left a lovely green and pink glow.

That same weekend, I arranged with my friend Jhosef and his sister to visit IKEA, as the three of us needed to pick up some supplies that we’d noticed we lacked during the lockdown. I was, however, mainly in it for the meatballs, but I did also decide that I’d probably splash out on some new coloured lights seeing as I’m now spending so much time in my flat.

After a rather stifling metro journey down to the shopping centre, we were ushered through the many steps of preparing to enter the shops: temperature checks, alcohol gel, and a stern word telling us to neither sit down nor come to close to others. Other than the taped-off seats, the queues to enter the shops, and the detour that we had to make through the horrible outdoor heat in order to enter IKEA, everything seemed like business as usual.

You can feel the heat in this photo that Jhosef took of me in the car park.

Our shop around IKEA was quite normal, except from the one-way system and the many signs telling us to only touch what we were going to buy. The experience at the cafeteria was very different, however, as we’d to wait to be seated, have our drinks poured for us, and were not even given napkins.

After arriving home late that evening, sticky and exhausted from the long journey and daytime heat, I was rather cross to discover that one of the lightbulbs I had bought was the wrong type. I wasn’t sure what I was to do, but in the end I decided to make the hour-long journey all over again the day after in order to get it replaced – if I know one thing about myself, it’s that if I don’t do something more or less immediately, it’ll probably never get done!

That Sunday evening was then dedicated to wiring up all these new lights that I had bought, alongside some that I’d had in storage for a while. Jhosef later came over to take a look at what I’d made of all these lights he’d seen me purchase, and we took a few photos around the house. I’ll be sure to hold a little photo shoot of my flat by night at some point and it’ll get its own little blog post (much like when I first moved in and started decorating), but for now I’ll leave you with a couple of teaser photos…

Something I’ve also been working on (and which I never really stop working on) is the design of my new website! I’m always cautious of bringing the topic up, as I’m well known for changing the design a ridiculous amount of times before launch, but I thought I’d share a little peek of some new features.

As I say though, do take this with a pinch of salt, as last time I shared details on my new website design (the one you’re seeing right now) I wrote a whole blog post about it, only to wind up changing typefaces, layouts, and other details before launch. It’s no lie when I tell my friends that my website is an eternal project!

Anyway, when not in my flat, I’ve been trying to visit the more green areas of the city, as I do occasionally miss the countryside that I grew up in. This has included the park by the river near my house, another green area by the railway tracks, and even a trip across the city to the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple donated to Spain and transported to the centre of Madrid in 1968.

I swooped by here with Jhosef after he took me out for a delicious Peruvian lunch at a local spot, where we dined on delicious roast chicken, ceviche (a dish based on fish which has been cooked by soaking it in lime juice), mussels, and papa rellena, a fried potato-based dish stuffed with meats and vegetables and all things nice. This was washed down with chicha, a delicious drink made from purple maize and infused with herbs and spices. It was absolutely delicious, and we definitely needed the climb up to the temple in order to walk off the lunch!

Social distancing meant that I could get this shot of the old and the new.

Another evening I ventured a little less far from home, opting to head down to the river for a couple of hours to call some friends back in England, watching the world go by and the sun go down as I hid in the cool shade of a bunch of trees.

A conundrum that I find myself faced with in this post-lockdown world is the struggle between the desire to get as far away from my house as possible and explore, and then the aversion to using public transport except when absolutely necessary. To this end, I settled on a solution, which was to pick up one of the city bikes and cycle as far away from my home as I could before I’d need to turn back in order to get a decent night’s sleep in.

This little aventure led me all the way to the northern transport hub of Moncloa, which I managed to reach by simply crossing a bridge before arriving at the end of the park’s path. This led me on to a series of quiet back roads, which then took me past a flat that I lived in whilst working at Erretres for the first time over four years ago.

After a lovely evening on my bike, the weekend saw me and Jhosef head out to celebrate the end of his university course. We headed up to Chueca, where we had some cocktails on the roof of the market, before heading down to a local restaurant and gorging on croquetas and fried squid. It was a lovely evening, and the cocktails certainly went down a treat after many weeks of hard work!

This isn’t all I’ve been up to, however, but it’s as far as I’ve gotten with organising my photos to upload to my blog! Me, Jhosef, and Hugo just spent a good few hours this weekend splashing around in the pool at the office, and of course there are plenty of photos, but that’ll have to wait until next time!

For now, I can reveal that I’ve booked myself a little escape to Tenerife and then Murcia for my work holidays, and so fingers crossed that the coronavirus situation in Spain remains under control so that I can get out to see my friends on the island and then my auntie and uncle down in the south. I’m sure that all will go well, and of course I shall return with many photos and I’m sure a good few stories too. Until then!