El Hombre Frito en Madrid

Despite not traveling this weekend, I still managed to spend money like I was because my aforementioned friend, Ben Friedman, came to visit Madrid from Barcelona. Unfortunately, Madrid wasn't holding the craziest festival ever, so Madrid didn't seem as crazy as Barcelona, but I still think I managed to show him a good time. After Fried arrived Friday afternoon, my roommate, Tori and I met up with him in front of the Palacio Real. Due to a little miscommunication, we only had a half hour before Fried left for a tour with his group. That night, Fried joined me and a few of my friends from SLU for a night out at Kapital. Kapital is THE dance club of Spain, if not all of Europe. The club is 7 stories, with a few different dance floors playing varieties of music. It opens at midnight, and Madrileños don't even show up til about 2 a.m. We arrived around 1:30 and were immediately shocked by the size of this club. Thousands of people fit comfortably in this building and half of them were on the main dance floor. In addition to a DJ and music, we were treated to a "Cirque du Soleil-esque" show of a guy flipping around on two ropes. The club was so much fun, but due to a few too many drinks, we ended up leaving early around 4 a.m. (Yes, this was VERY early in Madrid terms... The club doesn't even close to 7 a.m.)

So after a looooong days rest on Saturday recovering from the "fish flu", I met up again with Fried around 9 p.m. on Saturday. I had made reservations for a restaurant at 10:30, so to kill time and save money at dinner, we went to the store and bought appetizers of cheese, bread and Sangria. For dinner, we went to Sobrino de Botín, which is the world's oldest restaurant, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It was established in 1725, and the atmosphere hasn't changed. The restaurant was very cozy and kept the original structure of 1725. The restaurant is known for serving numerous amounts of celebrities: Francisco Goya (Spanish painter) worked there as a waiter, and Ernest Hemingway references it in his novel The Sun Also Rises. Among the 5 of us, we split the two specialties, the "roast suckling pig" and the "roast baby lamb"- both original recipes from 1725. The pig was one of the most amazing dishes I have ever eaten. I can't even explain how good it was. After we finished our meal and stepped back to 2009, we had some drinks until about 1 a.m. Fried, then returned to Kapital for the second straight night, while the rest of us called it a much needed early night.

Sunday morning, Tori and I had to drag Fried around since he had been partying a little too hard. We started the day at the Reina Sofia Museum which is part of the "Golden Triangle of Art". It is largely dedicated to Spanish 20th century art- the highlights being Pablo Picasso's Guerica and Salvador Dalí's works. Being on time crunch, we hit the major paintings and decided to get moving. Next, we went to El Rastro which is apparently the largest open-air flea market in Europe (this is according to Ben, so take it with a grain of salt). It was pretty crazy and full of thousands of people. After about an hour, we had all found gifts and souvenirs. By this time, Fried needed to meet up with his group to head to the airport. We walked him back to his hotel and saw him off after a great weekend. Adios, Hombre Frito.