lazy sunday afternoon

so i'm in madrid. in a VIPS with internet access. i'm soooo bored. the town basically shuts down on sunday and rita had to go home to northern spain for the weekend for some family stuff so i've been wandering and it's cold and windy and rainy. blah. i suppose i'll back up, since i haven't posted in like a week. i'll fill in the france-italy hole after this post.

so i got to madrid friday night. i met up with rita, who i met while studying abroad in china this past summer and who lives in madrid. that day had been her graduation so i we met up with her mom, cousin and friend and had dinner at like 11pm then went out dancing from about 1am to 4am. crazy spaniards.

i guess because her family was in town, we stayed in a hotel that night and when she had to leave the saturday morning for northern spain, said i could have the room for that night and on sunday she'd be back and we'd go to her apartment. so that was nice, if not a little confusing!

on saturday i went to retrieve ryan from the airport. knowing that i'd be in spain for 3 weeks, he decided to make use of his parents open-ended offer for a graduation present and decided to come to spain for the same time. when we got out of the metro, guess what ryan's first impression of madrid was? no less than 300 men and women riding their bicycles NAKED through the streets of spain. i mean... totally naked. unabashedly naked. surprisingly naked. soooo odd. ryan and i basically wandered around all day. ate at VIPS twice, since it was simple and close by. it was sunny and gorgeous and i'm sorry we didn't take better advantage of the day.

today i woke up and got breakfast in the hotel before checking out. little did i know, breakfast was NOT included and i got stuck with a bill for far too many euros. (it was like over €20 plus it looked like rita and her friend got breakfast 2 days ago so you can imagine how much the bill was...) on the other hand, i'm staying here basically rent free so in the larger picture, it's not soooo bad.

walking around with ryan, i figured we'd start at the Plaza Mayor and go from there. the problem was, in a sharp contrast to yesterday, today is pretty cold. i am not dressed weather appropriate and my luggage is at rita's friend's apartment. rita and i were supposed to go to Ibiza today, which is essentially a beach island, so i packed accordingly into my backpack before leaving the rest of my stuff at Lorena's... then it turned out Rita couldn't get back in time from her home to make the flight so we cancelled the journey. i'm wearing a dress with a cardigan... i'm very cold. a main reason why i've taken refuge in this VIPS.

ryan is all tuckered out. after being apparently wide awake at 6am, he seems to have maxed out on energy. in our desperation to find shelter from the cold, we had stopped in a starbucks where he fell asleep. i told him i'd be at vips for internet so i'd either go back there when i'm done or he could come here when he wakes up. not a great plan, but i wasn't exactly goign to sit there while he slept and he didn't seem very willing to wake up. i guess he's not as over his jet lag as he do proudly proclaimed earler :P

rita gets back at like 11 tonight. i havent eaten anything since that absurdly expensive breakfast. i think that's partially because i can't bring myself to spend more money since i spent an entire day's rations on that one meal without being aware of it. if i had been aware, i probably would have gone all out accordingly. actually, i wouldnt have eaten there at all. but that's neither here nor there.