Tapapies

On Thursday night a small group of us went to an area in Madrid called Lavapies for some tapas and a few beers. We started off at the bottom of Calle Argumosa and wandered up stopping at various places along the way. Lavapies has been holding an international food festival called Tapapies since 17th October - it's described as being an multicultural tapas route (ruta multicultural de la tapa) and it's a great place to spend a few hours trying different foods, having a drink and catching up.

There are apparently 75 restaurants/bars participating in the festival, each offering a different tapa and last night I had 4 tapas and 3 cañas all for 7 euros!

All participating bars have this flag outside and on the flag is a photo of the tapas offered, making it easy to decide where you want to stop for a while:

I didn't actually get many photos last night as I was too busy ramming delicious food and drink into my mouth and coming to the realisation that I have been saying "Carrefour" wrong all this time (never felt so English as when my French friend pointed out its not pronounced "carry-four" but "Cairefoh" - my whole life has been a rather embarrassing lie)

However, I think we may possibly be returning there tonight (Saturday) for some food and drinks before heading to a club to celebrate my friends birthday, so fear not, you may get to see many riveting photos of my food yet!

Today I managed to tackle quite a few things on my to-do list of doom, and tonight I stayed in to try and get lots of work done and have managed to get through a fairly decent amount, but shall save the details for tomorrow and head to bed as I've just realised how late it is! It may be past midnight, but as I haven't slept yet I would count this as the second post in 2 days, and so on Thursday I bought myself this absolute Zara BEAUT in anticipation of my achievement....

In my defence Madrid is pretty rainy right now. And getting rather chilly. And I have absolutely no form of a coat here whatsoever. And also, I really wanted it. Good enough excuse right? 

Buenas Noches!

Procrastination Queen

I have been putting off writing another blog post for a good eight weeks now because so much has happened and I just had no idea where to start with it all. Plus I am the most easily distracted person in the world and therefore nothing in my life that actually needs to be done ever gets done. Life would be so much easier if I just did anything at all, ever.

So instead of going back 8 weeks (I could sob about how fast this is all going) and writing the blog post of all blog posts (I feel it would reach dissertation lengths) I'm just going to start here and drop things in bit by bit (unless I get distracted for another 8 weeks and at that point should just give up altogether on the whole idea of blogging!)

So there have been teacher strikes and protests this week around uni and I was told by a friend a few days ago that we have today off (took his word, didnt put too much effort into clarifying this, a free day is not to be taken lightly). So me and my housemate decided last night to go for some shisha and then out to a club called Sala Marco Aldany (confusingly also a hairdressers chain in Madrid) which is a 2 minute walk from the shisha bar and only a 10 minute walk up the road from our apartment

The shisha place we went to is called Las Mil y Una Noches and it's a really cute little bar tucked away on some side street I would never have found on my own. They offer shisha, tea, food and beer/wine and its just a really nice, chilled atmoshpere inside. A lot of people seem to take their work there and sit smoking shisha and working using the free wifi there - I may have to try this one day as nothing ever gets done in my room.

There ended up being four of us smoking shisha, sharing 2 pipes - one with watermelon and mint and the other (which didn't go down as well as the first) mixed fruit and mint. 

We had a couple drinks each and then the bartender brought out the worlds vilest coffee liqueur and 5 shot glasses. Not wanting to offend him we all took the shots, so not only did I throw back this vile potion, I then thought it would be a great idea to wash the taste down with some beer. It wasn't a great idea. It was one of the worst I've ever had.

Around 12.30am we headed back up the road to the club where we paid 12 euros entrance each and got in return 2 free drinks, some "champagne" and a free shot. However, as we were walking in we were all given a sticker with a number on for some sort of raffle, and with my number being 11 and my friends being 15 we had the sudden and terrifying realisation that we had gotten to the club as the rest of Spain were still getting dressed. And yes, I counted as I got in there and there were roughly 15 people dotted around the rather bare looking room coming to the exact same realisation as us. However, barely half an hour later the queue outside was pretty long and, with Madrid being rather rainy recently, I was more than happy to have come earlier and not had to queue. 

On entering I was given a party hat and a "party blower" - I have asked everyone what to call these things and have been searching a solid 20 minutes on google trying to find a name for them but this is all I have. A blowout or a party blower - you know those foil rolled up things that you blow and they roll out and make a noise... well anyway I had one of those and I was acting like a hyperactive 6 year old with it on the dance floor.

We were also given a free t-shirt each that I surprisingly managed to carry around with me all night, and am now sat proudly wearing it as I drink tea and type this.

I think we left the club around 4.30am and walked home in the rain (putting my free tshirt to good use as a makeshift umbrella) but I failed to turn off all my alarms. So at 8am this morning I was stumbling around my room confused out of my mind as to where all the noise was coming from (I had about 6 alarms set on 2 different phones, both of which were hiding in dark corners of my room)

Today I've been trying to tackle my to-do list which seems to be growing at quite an alarming rate, but I have to admit I've actually just sat and drank tea, wrote this and watched a couple episodes of Suits (Harvey Specter marry me?)

I think the plan for tonight is going for Tapas in Lavapies with some friends, as they still have the Tapapies festival on, where a load of bars in the area offer up a unique tapas for 1 euro or tapas and una caña (a small beer) for 2 euros. I wonder if I can make it 2 blog posts in 2 days tomorrow with Tapas feedback - I feel this is an achievement that should be rewarded in the form of Zara goodies...

Vamos a ver!
Ciao for now!

p.s here is the champagne they gave us as part of the entrance fee:

I took the photo before we tried the drinks, and I had no idea why one was the right colour and the other two weren't. It's because two were water (with lemon) and one was champagne, and on pressing the bartender (who tried originally to convince us the water we were drinking was in fact champagne - nice try jesus) he admitted that they had just run out and offered us up two shots instead.

Twas the night before Erasmus...

So I am beginning my third year abroad - my Erasmus year - tomorrow!! I will be spending September to Jan/Feb in the wonderful city of Madrid, before switching to a completely different way of life in Palermo, Sicily.

I am going to be studying at university in both cities (UAM in Madrid) and I'm ridiculously excited for what I keep being told is going to be the best year of my life!

I'm the sort of person who likes to leave packing (and everything else in my life) until the very last minute, just so I can cause myself the most amount of stress possible. So with roughly 18 hours until my flight I have yet to pack anything...apart from the 20 kilo bag that I packed and handed over to my boyfriend this morning (for when he comes out at the end of the week) full of shoes, books and a few of those ridiculously heavy beaded tops that I feel compelled to buy everytime Topshop or Miss Selfridge have a sale (you know the ones I mean, the ones that feel like you're wearing chainmail). So I am doing better than usual.

I have also already bought some Euros for when I land, which is a huge achievement for me as I usually arrive in foreign countries in a rather sticky situation, with no local currency and an automatic travel blocker on my debit card due to failing to inform my bank once again that I was going abroad.

But all this organising and ticking things off my list (so many things) has called for a tea break and my first blog post.

I have spent the past few days online looking at flats on idealista, enalquier and easypiso and have managed to create a small shortlist of around 100 apartments I would like to go and see when I arrive in Madrid.... obviously this is a little ridiculous and so I have booked myself into a cheap hotel near the centre with free wifi, and I plan on narrowing this list down to a much more manageable number tomorrow night and seeing how many viewings I can get in this week.

I'm looking to live around the Moncloa/Arguelles area as this seems to be a large student area and its also within walking distance of the centre and well connected by metros to the rest of the city. Fingers crossed I'll find something by the weekend as I've booked myself into the hotel until Saturday, but as I'm going out pretty early I'm fairly confident I will have it all sorted by then and will be free to do some sightseeing with my boyfriend over the weekend (making lists of things to do has also been prioritised over packing).

But at some point I am actually going to have to pack and if I don't want to still be doing it at 4am tomorrow morning (I am very, very easily distracted) then I should probably get a move on now. There are so many little things to remember like actually finding out my insurance details (I know the uni sent me an email about it somewhere...), finding my erasmus grant card (pretty important), making sure my passport is still somewhere in the house (I'm kidding mum), so I am going to go and write the packing list of doom - the one that I have to write everytime that contains every single thing that is to be put in my case/hand luggage so as not to forget every single thing I needed/wanted. The packing list is more of a chore than the actual packing itself.

Ok, maybe just one more tea before I start...

¡Hasta Luego!