It was definitely relaxing though, and a good break from the whole school deal. It was a pretty normal week, got runs in almost every day except for Thursday, the weather has been great and people are out at night and during the day more now that it is not raining or cold. On Tuesday we had the girls over for Lunch, it ended up being me, Catarina, Rosarinho, Rita and Mimi. It was a bit of a going away lunch for Catarina since she was leaving on Thursday to move back to Portugal. Which brings me to something I am not sure that I have written about yet, we are all moving out by the end of the month, so things are really winding down quite quickly. Before I know it August will be here and it will be back to real life…not sure how that is going to go over! Ok, back at it, Tuesday night we all just did our own things for dinner an called it an early night.
Wednesday, again chilled out and got a workout out in. That evening we had a going away dinner for Catarina on Calle Montera, which is one of the main drags in Madrid. It was a really fun little restaurant and we all enjoyed some fun plates for dinner. I had Chopitos, which are fried little baby squid and a salad which was really good, some of the other dishes were salad with crab, smoked salmon with brie, goat cheese with a sweet sauce and toasts, and a quiche of some sort also. After dinner Catarina and Rita and I came back to the house and had an Amarginha, which is a typical Portuguese liquor with an almond flavor that you serve with fresh squeezed lemon juice. It was a nice time, and a good way to say by.
Thursday night was dinner with Marc and Amy at the Indian restaurant. It was good as always, and it was one of the last times we were going to get to see Amy because she was headed back to Arizona to take part in some conferences for the summer. The meal was good as always and afterwards I called it a night.
Friday was probably the most relaxing day of all, after doing not much of anything all day but watching a tv series I walked all the way across the hall to Carlos and Rita’s for dinner. We did absolutely nothing but hang out talk and just have a completely relaxed night. Saturday was more of the same, except this time we had the Champions League Final to watch between International Milan and Bayern Munich and Mimi and Ana also came over to watch the game with us and hang out. I took some peel and eat shrimp with me, Carlos made some cheese, snacks, and finger foods finger foods, and Rita made a pork tender loin in a mustard cream sauce. We never seem to eat too badly when we are together!
Sunday morning I was up at the crack of dawn…well not quite, but close. I met up with Amy at 9:30 in the Moncloa bus station and we were off to hike for the afternoon. We went to a place about an hour away from here up in the mountains. We arrived at a stop were all the hikers on the bus started to get off so we quickly followed and did the same thing just to find out that we needed to have gone another 7 km or so t the right place. Luckily the road was flat and we started walking. About 100 yards down the road with my thumb out a really nice fellow named Luis stopped and picked us up in his VolksWagon van and gave us a lift to the correct forest…I am not sure why I cannot remember the name of the place. Luis is a Archaeologist from Bilbao and gave us many great tips about trails to go up for the day. We said thanks and left him in the parking lot and within about 10 minutes were lost, or heading in the wrong direction…we ended up seeing him and tagging along with him for the rest of the afternoon. It was nice to have our own little tour guide along with us. He knew the area really well, and was great fun to hike with. After being up and down the mountain for about 4 hours we made it back to the base of the mountain, and Amy and I were about to get onto the bus to head home but Luis offered us a ride back into Madrid that ended up being quite a bit quicker. It is always nice to meet those nice people out there…and I know at this point mom, and many others are saying “he could have been DANGEROUS” but there really are good people out there and he was a fellow student and outdoorsmen who was genuinely nice. He even took pictures of us and sent them this week. After getting home Rosarinho had a friend come into town from Lisbon for some interviews named Lara, we all hung out and chatted for the evening. Later that night Marc came over to crash at the house also because in the morning it was off to Istanbul!
Well, that was kind of a boring week but it gave me a chance to recharge the batteries a bit and hopefully that will help me study while I am in Lisbon! I am sorry this post is a week late but things all ran together on Sunday and Monday and I had no chance to post it. It has been absolutely non-stop since leaving for Istanbul!
Hope this finds everyone doing really well.
Much love,
Phil
No comments:
Post a Comment