Oldest Restaurant in the World and Largest Club
Trip Start
May 30, 2010
1
14
50
Trip End
Jul 15, 2010
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Thursday, June 10, 2010
We woke up pretty hung-over and almost late for the 11:15 AM Free Walking Tour which we've decided to utilized any locations we can. We got ready and shot out the door for the meeting point of the tour down the street at another hostel, Cats, which our hostel does a lot of mutual events with. Our tour guide for this run was a Poland native who was very nice and lively despite being difficult to understand many times.
The weather for today was slightly better than the day before, but still very overcast and a chilly breeze kept reminding us we wish we could have packed nice jackets for our trip. Our guide brought us to a few really interesting sites including various palaces, gardens and a couple historical sites. One very interesting stop was at a nunnery where the women inside have sworn an oath for a life of solidarity and confinement. They never see or speak to anyone, ever! The bakery consists of a revolving door where if you ask for one of their delicious cakes and they place it on the sill and rotate it out to you. It’s insane, I couldn’t imagine living a life where you’re not allowed to speak or see anyone outside of your confinements. Another great stop was at "Oldest Restaurant in the World" Sobrino de Botin, established in 1725! We decided to join some newly made French Canadian girl friends that dinner here is a must and booked our reservations for 10 PM. The tour went by pretty fast and there really are not too many special places to see in Madrid so I was a little bummed about that.
After the tour we went back to the hostel and met up with our German buddy Roland. We went and ate some lunch, took showers and rested up for the night. Our plans were to eat at Botin, then meet up with the hostels for the big pub crawl night. The Pub crawl was 15 Euro and included to bars with a drink at each, then capping it off at the “largest night club in Madrid” Kapital, we figured we couldn’t go wrong with that. Before dinner we wanted to do some pre-drinking and got some bottles of liquor and champagne at a local market. We found a cool back alley as our location and had a blast just popping bottles, drinking and talking for about an hour.
Dinner was spectacular at Botin. The atmosphere at the oldest restaurant in the world is what you would expect, full of people and rich charm. Despite the food being slightly overpriced and not that amazing, enjoying our friends and good drinks was all we needed. We had snuck our bottles of liquor in the girl’s purses and were drinking vodka waters all night on top of a few bottles of wine the ladies bought. We ran through all of that alcohol and so I proceeded to snatch a few extra half full bottles of wine on neighboring tables that previous diners had left. Dinner lasted nearly 3 hours, and at just after 1 AM we made our way out of the famous restaurant and over to the meeting point for the pub crawl.
As if getting home around 3 AM and super thrashed the night before wasn’t enough, this night was an epic rage fest. The first two bar stops were nothing special and sort of annoying in anticipation of this legendary club Kapital. Kapital is a 7-story disco tech that pumped crazy music, killer light shows and multi-level variously themed bars. The French girls and ourselves got completely hammered, danced our legs off and raged till 7 AM! It truly is something to experience walking out of a club to sunlight when you are absolutely thrashed. We somehow managed to walk to the girl’s home then make our way back as well, turning in bed at around 7:30 AM. What an epic night!
