Madrid, Spain - October 14-19

Given that Ali and I were spent 3 months spending pretty much every minute of every day together without any personal space, we got along very well. Still, it's sometimes nice to have other people to hang out with to break things up. In Rome, Ali ran into one of her high school friends. In Paris, we visited with one of my high school friends (and had a great dinner). Little things like that gave us a chance to share stories about a trip and find new conversation topics. So we were excited that our friend Martha and her sister Emily were going to meet us in Madrid.

Having other people around changed a few things.

First, we had somebody to take our picture.



And we had people to take pictures with.



And we had an excuse to be goofy.



Emily apparently has a tradition of recreating the pose of statues. Everybody got into this one.



We spent a lot of time hanging around Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor at night, which remains one of my favorite places to just hang out.



One night there was a big rally of the transgender community. I think they were saying their medical condition should be treated like any other medical condition rather than as a mental illness and thus that certain procedures and medication should be part of the medical plan. I'm not really sure. There were a bunch of girls with stick on mustaches and guys dressed in drag.



I said "That's not something you see often." Martha, who lives in San Francisco, said "Actually it is."