Good Friday

Today Natalia and I stayed in bed all day and worked on our homework and our trip to Italy, again. We relaxed until about 4 in the afternoon and then got ready to go out and see another procession. This procession was planned to walk along Gran Via, one of the large boulevards in Madrid, and in front of the Prado museum until they reached Puerto del Sol. When we got out of the subway and tried to head up to the street there were guards blocking off the large exits. We finally found an exit that was open and when we headed out we realized that we had arrived right in the middle of the procession. The processions usually last a few hours to go by one spot, but this one lasted barely an hour.

We were able to see most of the floats and the people following the procession. There were people walking barefoot through the streets, people who had arrived to see the procession and felt so moved that they took their shoes off and followed. After a while we joined the horde of people to go find Sian. When we met up with her we talked her into going to grab some tapas with us before going home.

We figured that it would probably be easier to walk to the square, rather than try and take the metro. Little did we know that we would be following the entire procession to the square. So, though AIFS warned us to please refrain from joining in any parades or marches, we found ourselves in the middle of the Good Friday procession to Puerto del Sol. We had a good time, considering it took almost an hour to walk a few blocks. We discussed our heritage and where everyone's family is from. Natalia's mother comes from Puerto Rico and her dad from Spain. Michelle is very much English. And Sian comes from England but she said that her family comes from northern and southern England which makes a big difference in lighter and darker skin color. Pretty exciting.

We finally made it to the same street we had gone to on our tapas tour a few nights before. We went to one of the bars we hadn't been to and ordered some wine and bread. After a while Josune and Alex met up with us and we went next door to the Sangria place so Michelle could try her hand at pouring Sangria straight into her mouth. After this bar we said goodnight to Sian and headed out to try and find some racciones because we were starving. Racciones are larger portions of tapas for a little bit more money. We wound up at a little bar and had some patatas and chorizo. We ended the night back at the ice cream bar for a little sugar. Finally we were pretty tired from our day of not really doing anything and headed back home.