Living Life to the Fullest

Though we only spent a short time in Spain, we got a feel for the pace of life there; and life is good. It is all about enjoyment. They sleep late, take long lunches, siesta, and party til the sun comes up. It seems like all we did in Spain was eat and drink. First there was the long lunch (unlike the Spaniards we can't stay up all night and then be bright-eyed and bushy tailed for breakfast). For lunch, the locals normally eat the "Menu del Dia." You choose a first course, second course, dessert, drink and coffee for around $10. After lunch we would wander the streets, exploring the city before enjoying a brief nap before dinner at around 10. Many Spanish restaurants don't even open their doors for dinner until 9 and it's not uncommon to see people heading out to their evening meal at 11:30 or later. Since our first night in Spain was election night in the US, this scheduled worked out perfectly for us. We found a restaurant near our hotel that was hosting an election night bash. They had two set meal options for dinner, the Obama meal (which was a hamburger and fries) and the McCain meal (which was a steak and salad). The place was decorated with red, white, and blue streamers, and they had CNN on the big screen televisions. The place was packed with both natives and Americans waiting for the results to come in. At about 3 am we gave in to fatigue and called it a night, but the party at the restaurant went all night. Our other big night on the town in Spain was our last night in Madrid. There we went to see a flamenco show at a club down the street. It was fabulous. The music and the dance were so filled with fire and passion that it brought tears to my eyes. I wish we had been able to spend more time there because I could easily live off of paella, sangria, and tapas and I would have loved to take flameno lessons, but we were also ready to explore other regions of the globe and experience life outside of the western world.