Feliz 2009!

After Christmas, my friend Rebecca from school came for a three week visit. I had another friend from work who was studying in Barcelona also popped over to Madrid for New Years. With Rebecca I did a free walking tour of Madrid which was entertaining and informative. We were not able to make it into the Palace but we went up the Cathedral and saw great views of the city. All three of us took a trip to Toledo (this is now my most visited Spanish city, that I haven´t lived in). It is still beautiful and interesting. We found a sword smith´s shop and played around inside for alittle and then we went to the great bridge of San Martin that goes over the river. Alex and I took a detour under the bridge to check out the generator and we ran into some guys fishing on the banks. They even had fish! Its funny how you can visit places multiple times and still manage to see different things, even in a town as small as the old part of Toledo.

My work friend Alex got us hooked on a tapas bar/sidereria called El Tigre. It is always jam packed with mostly young people because you can order a caña (small beer) and get a large plate of food. Usually if you order a drink they will give you a plate of potatoes or one item, but at El Tigre you get patatas bravas, croquetas, and little bread tapas all for the cost of the caña. If you have 2 or 3 people you can order 2 or three rounds of small beers and eat dinner for 5 euros. Its amazing and the food is pretty good. We are in the habit of going twice a week now. Sometimes its so crowded that you really feel like a sardine.

After our first El Tigre experience we were walking back into Sol when we run into hordes of people and some of my friends. Aparently on the night before new years there is a tradition called ¨pre uvas´, or pre new years. There is a traidition in Spain to eat 12 grapes with the first chimes of the New years for good luck. One ¨highly respectable´source says that the tradition dates back to 1909 when the harvesters had an over abundance of grapes and were able to somehow convince the Spanish to eath 12 grapes on New Years for luck. Some people argue that this would have been highly improbable, but never the less it is the traidition now. The younger people started doing it the night before new years so that on new years they could spent the time with their families. It was basically the same thing. However since we were tired we left our celebrating for the actual NYE. On NYE we prepared our grapes and I had Alex and Rebecca and a new friend from a hostel Sean and we had pasta. It was great to figure out how many people I can get into my small common area. Our coffee table folds out into a large table top. After dinner we grabbed our grapes and our bottle of fizzy beverage of choice and headed down to Sol. The police had set up barricades and weren´t letting bottles inside the blocked off area but we hit ours and snuck them in. Its much more exciting popping a bottle and drinking from it than from a cup at midnight. The place was packed, mostly with Italians and English Speakers. They had lights on the clock tower and at 12 there were amazing fireworks. the strange thing is that we didn´t hear the clock chime so we didn´t know when to eat out grapes. If you watch on TV you can hear the chimes but I guess when you are down there between all the masses you can´t really hear much except people and fireworks. After we watched the fireworks and made our way out of the masses of people we went back to my friend´s hostel and hung out and then went to another friend´s flat to hang out because all the clubs and most of the bars charged a huge cover fee (40 for the cheap bars and up to 100 or more for the clubs). It was fun to be with friends to ring in the New Year.