Spain

Checkout time was noon. I love you spain.
We slept in till just before and then headed up the street to check in at a cheaper hotel. It was clean and nice but nowhere near as posh as the one we had stayed in the night before. But you know what? I honestly didn't care. Shower? Check. Bed? Check. I'm good.
We couldn't get in until 2 so we went to this place for lunch and sangrias. We had intellectual discussions about differences of needs under the cover of an umbrella until our determined check in time. It was a good meal for the price we paid but man was it hot out. Spain in the summer is no joke, hot.
We checked in and waited for about 10 minutes for them to get our room ready. It was while we were in the lobby waiting for our room that the second wave of sleepiness hit us. We passed out again.
When we woke up we went to this plaza close to where we ate for lunch and had dinner there. Specifically tapas. Tapas is something I had been wanting to try for awhile since Id read it on Bellas blog. It's basically a bunch of small plates with a sample of food on each plate and you share it amongst people. It was a sweet idea. The only thing I didn't like about it was when you liked something you wanted to get more of it but you had already ordered all these other plates, however it was a really great way to try a lot of different foods.
After dinner we called it an early night and headed back to bed.
Tomorrow's plans consisted of going into Madrid to stay with Bella's cousins for a few days. It was pretty sweet to see how real Spanish people live. I was extremely thankful they opened up their home to us. Their home was the traditional Spanish way of life. Their apartment building was a few stories high; they lived on the third floor. They had the traditional method of hanging clothes on the outside of their building...which was kind of strange because when you did your laundry and hung it up, anybody walking into their apartment could look up and see our unmentionables.....meh....I guess I'm not going to see these people again.
We spent the evening going grocery shopping, having dinner, and staying up late partying in the streets of Spain. It was incredible. Spanish people do not sleep. At all. When 5 am rolled around I was exhausted, but Bella and her cousins where just getting started.
We ended up rolling into bed not too much later. Because Bella's cousins didn't have enough room in their loft apartment to keep us we ended up staying in this garage of sorts. It was in the middle of construction to be turned into a studio. Just when I thought I had slept everywhere....it wasn't bad though. It had a garage door of sorts on the outside and we were right up against the street so we could hear Spain partying for the rest of night and on into the morning. You know you're getting old when your body has a bedtime and Spain made me realized that I was getting old. Still, I was glad to lay my head down and fall asleep to the sounds of the droning garbage men and drunken spanish conversations, as long as it meant I got to sleep.