Friends with Food

Or Food with Friends. Both titles work. Both are fantastic. Also: do you know how hungry a person gets when they see photos of food pile up on their desktop? Let me tell you: very.  They’ve been sitting there for weeks and I kept telling myself I’d get rid of them, stop that hunger and yet, there they sat. So now, after I’ve left Madrid, after I’ve sat for hours with friends and have drunk copious amounts of coffee and laughed over plates of food and said good-bye to those people that made Madrid Madrid for me, I’m clearing my desktop.  Just a little bit. 

La Boqueria

As most of you who’ve been here for awhile already know: I love food.  In a Timone and Pumbaa, “Love. Not like, love,” kind of way. Which meant that La Boqueria was a must see for me.  Which I did.  At least three times. Can you blame me though? Most of my favourite things all under one, very nicely decorated roof: food. People to photograph. Cute boys with tattoos. Food. Does life really get much better than that?

Sunny Days Mean…

Sunny days mean: fresh orange juice. Six to make a full glass. The peels are stackable, three to a pile as you finish juicing them, one by one on the counter. Almost like a math equation. If you have six oranges and one glass, what do you get? A glass full of orange juice and four piles of juiced out peels. Math I like. 

Just a Little Messy

For someone who’s s really into all things neat, tidy and organized, I’m also very fond of messy and chaotic. Specifically when I’m ‘making’ something. When I was in high school and spent hours painting, I’d have paint scattered around me, brushes, magazines, containers of water, all of it just spreading out around my room. When I pack, I have this (potentially bad?) habit  of pulling everything out, dumping it on my bed and then trying to figure out how it all fits into my bag. (Here’s a good example (or two) from when I left France last July.) The same goes for when I’m cooking. I grab everything I need and then proceed to make a big, unholy mess as I’m cutting and peeling and grating. And I love it.

Saturday Wander Pt. II

Coloured buildings are some of my favourite things. Along with elaborate windows and interesting doors. I don’t ask for a lot. The great thing about Madrid, and Europe in general, really, is that there’s so much of it. You’d think after being here for over a year and a half, I’d get used to it but I’m not. Every time I go out and look up and see all of that, it makes me happy. It’s a really simple thing, I know, but it adds so much character and pop to catch your eye as you wander around.