Madrid - My 2 Cents

I know Nate gave a recap of our time in Madrid but I wanted to add a bit more from my perspective as well. 

View from the Google Madrid Office

One thing that really stood out for me this trip to Spain was their sense of time.  Everything is later in Spain and time doesn’t seem to matter as much.  As Nate mentioned, I was in Madrid for work on Thursday and Friday.  After being in internal meetings all day Thursday, we had a team work dinner that night.  The dinner didn’t even start until 9:30pm, with us finishing up around midnight and off for drinks after.  The Google Madrid café’s lunch hours are from 1pm to 4:30pm.   Nate and I went to an actual restaurant (as opposed to just going from one tapas bar to another) for dinner Saturday night and got there around 9:30pm.  The place was practically empty but by the time we were half way through our meal, it was packed full.  I was worried when we arrived that the restaurant wouldn’t be any good since no one was there, turns out we were just too early.  Nate left Sunday afternoon and I walked around the Prado Museum and got ready for one more day in the office on Monday.  We had three partner meetings lined up so it was a busy day.  The first meeting was scheduled to start at 9:30.  The partner we were meeting with didn’t show up until 10am and then it ran an hour over.  You gotta love it.  When it comes to time, Spain couldn’t be more opposite of Switzerland.   

So back to work.  Thursday was meetings all day and Friday we had a fun event where we attended a cooking class and learned how to make tapas and sangria.  I loved this idea….such a great team event.  We made tortilla Espanola (Spanish potato omelette), calamari, salmorejo (similar to gazpacho) and lots of other yummy things that I can’t remember.  One lesson I learned about sangria, which I will pass on to you, is that it is considered tacky to eat the fruit (apparently that’s only what college students do looking to get drunk).   I’m not usually a big fan of sangria but what we made sure was tasty.

Another thing Nate and I checked out was a flamenco show on Saturday night.  I had wanted to do it, it seemed like a fun thing to do, and turned out it was.  It was in a smaller venue (think Bimbo’s in SF) with a Spanish band playing and a man and a woman flamenco dancer.  Just a small stage with no more than 7 people on it.  It was so fascinating to watch and very intense! 

Spain was definitely a good time.  After five nights there I came home exhausted but loved every minute.  I can’t wait to go back!