Wedding Dresses Hand-Delivered to Madrid

I am a little backlogged, but want to get everybody caught up on the past two weekends. Almost everyone has heard the details of the trip to Madrid from Casey, but I need to write it down for the sake of posterity.

Casey in Parque Retiro

I took off Friday afternoon after class for the five hour bus ride to Madrid. We had a nice half hour pause along the way to break things up. I met up with Casey at the metro station outside of Pete´s apartment and we spent the next few hours catching up and trying on wedding dresses of course. I am really appreciative of Casey making the effort to bring the dresses over to Spain. I had some fun looking around Spanish wedding dress shops (Pronovias) which are a dime a dozen around here, but couldn´t really find anything to suit my style. The fashion in wedding dresses is lacy with some really unique designs, but like the US, the prices are high. Thanks to Casey I now have a dress that I love.

Pete was an excellent guide to Madrid. The first night he took us to his favorite tapas bar, where there was not another American to be seen. Casey and I had the pleasure of eating potatoes, french fries, potatoes covered with mayonaise, oh, and some sausage! I can feel the arteries clogging now. The next day Casey and I explored Madrid. She had visited the Prado the day before and I visited it five years ago so we opted for the Reina Sofia and some modern art. The highlight is Picasso´s Guernica, but there were many lovely pieces. We walked through an enormous park, Parque Retiro and down the wide avenue of Calle Mayor to Plaza Mayor. Later we caught up with Pete and spent the rest of the evening hanging out and practicing our Spanish with his friends. We moved from one very crowded, but fun tapas bar to another bar with music and dancing. The friends were very nice, particularly a girl from Malaga who is studying film and is making a documentary on the poor neighborhoods of Malaga. As Casey would say, she was ¨la mejor chica de peliculas.¨

Unfortunately I had to leave the next day at five. Casey and I spent the afternoon continuing our discovery of Madrid. We caught the tail end of the market at El Rastro and cruised by Palacio Real before I caught the bus back to Granada.