Saturday April 11

Waking up just in time to take advantage of my complimentary hotel breakfast, I sat pretending not to appear as awkward as I felt eating at a 4-person table all by myself. I returned to the room in efforts to finish my paper before siesta. Having met my goal, I took a picnic to the Plaza Mayor, sitting on the cobblestones as before. Somehow, though, the lack of friends and sunshine this time just didn’t give me the same experience. I returned to the hotel to enjoy my habitual siesta nap. I’ve never had such a wonderful wake-up call than at 5pm that afternoon when Alexandra called me saying she was downstairs waiting for me in the hotel lobby. She had been with her family and a few other group members in the Canary Islands since Tuesday and reunited with me in Madrid before our return home to Sal. Between the Bull’s Hostel shenanigans and the thought of sleeping in the same room with a bunch of randos, mom and dad were more eager for us to cancel our previous hostel plans and to let us stay at Hotel Santo Domingo. Naturally, we were eager to accept. Que guay, no?!

Soon after we settled in and had the inevitable, unrelenting word-vomit session about our individual spring breaks, we left the hotel for Donor Kabap. What lucky girls to have not one, but TWO, options for our favorite food right across the street. Afterwards, we ran a few errands in El Corte Ingles and headed back to Santo Domingo. At this point, I had pretty much become best friends with the man at the front desk…how long had I been in this hotel!?

As had been planned since the previous weekend, Alex and I were determined to appear at the infamous Club Kapital that night. Although we’re still unsure of who rates this and how, it has been named the number three club in the world. And when we got off the metro at Atocha, made it passed the bouncers (who accused us of being under 18, by the way), paid our 20-euro covers (I know, yikes), we knew why. It was seven stories of flashing lights and blasting music. I had never nor will likely ever again be at a place anything like Kapital. Complete with leather couches, disco balls, smoke machine, and a stage full of go-go dancers, Alex and I surveyed our surroundings with mouths wide open. After taking advantage of our free drink ticket vouchers, it didn’t take us long to notice the dramatically imbalanced ratio of males to females. The feeding frenzy began. Of course being in Spain for the past 3 months has undoubtedly numbed us to the often sleazy nature of Spanish men, but this experience haled in comparison to the norm. The game became to see how easily we could slip away unnoticed, but then another group of men followed. It got to the point where we began pretending that we were from Germany, didn’t speak any Spanish, and were devote lesbians. Please also keep in mind that our outfits were not suggestive in the least! When ladies go out in Spain, the focus is on being stylish, not revealing one’s cleavage to the world…another reason I’m not thrilled about returning to the States. At about 4:15, Alex had had her fair share of cheesy pick-up lines and was ready to call it a night. Walking out, we noticed that no one appeared to be leaving anytime soon. The long line of people waiting to go in only confirmed this. Wow. We hailed a cab without any problems and collapsed onto the fabulous beds of good ol’ Santo Domingo.