Chapter VI - Arab Baths, Football, and Flamenco

This will be the final chapter of Spain (who really needs to hear about my journey home?)…believe me, there doesn’t need to be anymore, because this particular day was so jam packed with activity that it felt like three days all in one.

In the morning, the three of us headed off to the Arab baths. We had made an appointment a week earlier. Alicia had spotted the place, a somewhat hidden glass door off of the main square along a narrow street.

After spending a year in Hungary, I was no stranger to thermal baths, but this was something altogether different. Same concept: hot water intended to make you feel relaxed…but entirely different atmosphere. I borderline felt like a celebrity.

The three of us were really excited for the experience…
A half hour massage
An hour spent soaking in the different pools

I think Jon and Alicia needed it more than I did after finishing another year of law school and their courses in Madrid. As for me, I was fresh off two class trips in Hungary and had been leisurely lounging around Szerencs.

After escaping the stifling street heat of Madrid, I wasn’t sure I wanted to paddle around in steaming water, but as soon as Alicia and I entered the ladies locker room, all my doubts promptly evaporated.

I wouldn’t have even called it a locker room…it was more like a dressing parlor or a lounge or a salon for a princess. All the facilities were clean, nice, and there was more than enough space to change. One of the best things about this place was that the owners would only allow a certain amount of people into the baths at a time so that it would be quiet and you could become properly relaxed. Once changed, we walked down a dimly lit stone staircase into the bath chamber.

Tea lights lined the walkway to the pools. There was a cold pool, a warm pool, and last but not least…caliente!! (my favorite).

The three of us went to the warm bath and paddled around, sat, meditated, and did whatever else you do in a thermal bath. The décor was seemingly Turkish with tiny holes in the roof delivering “sun-light” and the Arabic arches gave us a peek into the next pool.

One of my favorite parts of this place was the tea room/ I need a break from the water area. There was even a tea spigot on the wall that, when turned, sprinkled warm tea into a paper cup. Wow. I was sitting with my tea on a wooden bench taking in the tea lights, the fountains, and the always soothing sound of moving water, when a woman came to take me to my massage.

I’ve never had a professional massage before, but I’m always up for something new. We had our massages in the same room at the same time and when we came out, we were all a little light headed…but in that overly relaxed way that you get after drinking tea, floating around in scorching water, and being massaged.

The only downfall was that we were booted outta there after our hour and a half was up. I purchased some herbal teas for contact teacher, Etelka, because she always raves about tea and I was looking for something appropriate and useful to give her. I decided that antioxidant tea from Spain was it.

From there, we did a 180 and decided to check out the World Cup match between Spain and (I think) Saudi Arabia on a huge screen in a square. The atmosphere was so heightened with energy and excitement and drunkenness and belligerence that I couldn’t quite process it all in my sleepy state. We walked amidst yellow and red dressed fans draped in the Spanish flag, faces painted, shouting, cheering. Fans climbed up concrete platforms from some really unstable ladders so that they could see the screen. We stayed for Spain’s one and only goal that would win it and then left to watch the rest of it in a calmer Mexican joint while eating nachos and drinking mojitos.

That night, we bought tickets to a flamenco show, which turned out to be a competition from groups around Europe. It was in an auditorium/theater like setting it only cost us six euro a piece!

There were about six performances. The first was traditional Spanish flamenco with men and women, and the following consisted of a contemporary French group, a few girls from the Netherlands, and some more from Spain. Some were dramatic and others were humorous. Nevertheless, six euro got us a lotta bang for our buck.

Alicia and Jon did a fantastic job of exposing me to a lot of Spain. I literally can’t believe how much we saw and did together in a week’s time. Before I knew it, we had reached our last night in Spain and I was sad to leave it and my friends as well.

We went to dinner at our sandwich place the next night with some law school friends of Alicia and Jon and then had some churros and hot chocolate afterwards. This has got to be one of the best after dinner sweet treats of all time. I’m not talking about watered down hot chocolate…I’m talking about thick, dark chocolate that doesn’t drip from your churro, but oozes from it instead.

There’s certainly something to be said for Madrid’s nightlife. The streets became more crowded than they were during the day. No more were the throngs of tourists, but the natives had come out to party.

And they were still out partying…or rather coming home when I trudged to the metro the next morning with my backpack to get to the airport that would take me back to Hungary.