We were fortunate to be able to come to Madrid and to visit our wonderful neighbors from Atlanta: Marta, Alvaro, Lucia, and David. We spent our first full day in the city with them. Since Marta had grown up in Madrid, she knew all the best places to go and she took us on a long, meandering tour.

We went to Retiro Park–there were still many beautiful colors on the trees and the weather was 60-ish, so it was perfect. Some of the pictures may have been taken by Marta or another member of the fam. I think the one below may have been Lucia’s — look at those black swans. I don’t think I knew they actually existed before this.

There were all sorts of other birds, including peacocks!

We also walked by the Palacio and the nearby gardens. Here are David and Lucia. They look so grown up!

And the rest of us!

We made it to the center of Spain. Notice how cool Alvaro and I are with our Sauconys.

We also went to the Plaza Mayor, where we met Spiderman Gordo–Fat Spiderman. He was so wonderful and funny that we started calling him Spiderman Gordito out of sheer affection.

This is my favorite picture of us with the Gordito. Lucia was insanely embarrassed by the antics of the adults; I think she almost ran away, never to be seen again.

A few other photos. I definitely left out the most embarrassing pictures of myself. It’s one of the perks of being the blog-writer.

On Wednesday morning, Barbara and Nancy joined us for a visit. Despite being in transit for 10 hours, they were ready to go conquer the city. We started with the inside of the Palacio.

Like all Americans, we were stunned by the sheer amount of gilding on everything. After a little while, it becomes a bit much for me. I start thinking about the peasants and their servitude. Can you imagine cleaning that chandelier?

We also went to the Reina Sophía Museum and saw the Guernica! It’s really big. And the Prado with all its Titians and Goyas and some surprisingly excellent Greek and Roman statuary. Where are all the pictures? The museums weren’t super picture friendly, so there are none on my camera. I have to check with Barbara and Nancy.

On our last night, we went out again with the Morcillos. I can’t tell you what a wonderful time we had. It’s impossible not to love them.

We told them about a Berber wedding game that we learned about in Morocco. I’m going to preempt your skepticism by telling you that we confirmed this game with two separate Berbers; we’re pretty sure it’s a thing.  This game is between the bride and the groom and it’s pretty high stakes–whoever wins the game gets control of the marriage. The bride and the groom drink milk, but don’t swallow it. Then they make eye contact and hold the eye contact as long as they can while everyone around tries to distract them. When one of them breaks eye contact, the other spits the milk into his/her face and then runs away.

When we told the Morcillos about the game, they insisted we play (without the spitting). David won against Lucia and Garett won against me; although I would like to state that Garett only won because David had drenched Garett’s hair with water and the dripping distracted me. It was great fun.

A few other things. We saw three protests in Madrid–these folks protest on the regular.

Also, the Navidad Lottery or El Gordo was in full swing. People were selling tickets everywhere; there were huge lines for some tickets and when I went to the post office, people were even sending the tickets by mail. There’s a delightful podcast on the lottery that I’d recommend called “El Gordo” by 99% Invisible.

Here’s one of the long lines.

Madrid was one of the busiest cities we’ve been to. Day and night there were crowds of people all over the city. It also lives up to its reputation as a city that eats late–most places weren’t even serving food until 8 pm (at which point it had been full dark for several hours). We are in Lisbon now until Thursday.