Meet Zahra, Abbey, and Abbey's friend from London, eat mexican food, Abbey's afwul drink, delicious chilaquiles, drag-cabaret, wok to walk, meet other random group of people, carry around food for four hours as we go to another club, lots of free drinks on the house because that one guy knew the owner, then finally ate and went home. Or I waited outside the metro station for "a good minute" because I got confused on the time change.
As usual, I went to Abbey and Zahra's place, but this time we were joined by Zahra's London friend Amit. Our first stop was a Mexican restaurant, and there I found on the menu something I had not had since Mexico: chilaquiles, which are essentially Nachos smothered in a sauce (in this case green chili-chicken sauce) and topped with cheese and sour cream, the nachos becoming slight soft. My only wish is that I had found them sooner. Abbey got a drink called a "Vampiro" because she was dressed as a vampire and found it fitting, but on trying it she said it tasted like "sprite, bloody mary mix and pizza mixed together". I was skeptical of her assessment but upon trying it, she was spot on - it did taste exactly like sprite, bloody mary mix and pizza, plus the tequila base and the sprinkle of hot chilies around the rim. Maybe the description appeals to you all, but it was the worst drink I'd ever had.
After eating we got in our costumes and headed out on the town, first heading to a place that Abbey and Zahra had in mind but that I had no clue about. So we walked in to find a drag queen telling jokes and singing. It was some sort of drag cabaret, and it was when we arrived mostly empty, so we got good seats. We kicked back for a while, listened to the drag queen talk, and after a while s/he noticed us in the back and made mention of our Halloween costumes.
A note about Halloween in Spain: Halloween, as it is celebrated, is an American holiday. It is, however, rapidly becoming popular in Spain. We saw several people out on the streets in costumes, yes, but it's still quite common for someone to say "oh, you're dressed up to celebrate Halloween, that's cool!" implying that there is still definitely a strong sense of novelty and foreignness attached to it. But the darkness of Halloween, the novelty of being able to dress up, etc. are aspects which mesh very well with the Madrid nightlife/party scene, and thus it will definitely hold a secure spot in Spanish culture, though it may end up being a more teen/adult thing than a child-oriented holiday like in the US.
Anyway, after leaving the drag cabaret we were getting pretty hungry again (a few hours had passed since eating, and we hadn't eaten too much at the restaurant) so we went to the awesome Wok to Walk, which is basically a quick-service Mongolian barbeque: pick your items and sauces and then they cook it up for you. Tasty and healthy.
So upon leaving Wok to Walk, we saw some other costumed peoples out on the street and decided to greet them, because we hadn't seen any in quite a while. The guy "leading" this new group seemed to be in the know about places to go around town, and we went to one club for a few minutes then he said he knew the "boss" at another club, and we went there for a couple of hours, him getting us lots of free shots and free drinks until we were too tired, and still very hungry because we had not yet eaten our food and had been carrying it around with us for two hours.
The next day was a day of rest and doing nothing of worth. How relaxing!
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