That title makes it sound like I spent the weekend skiing but alas, I did not. I did however, spend Saturday in a little ski town about 45 minutes from Madrid (Navacerrada) where we ate and drank and looked at the mountain and got as about as close to actual skiing as I like. 😉
But that was Saturday, backing up to Friday, we weren’t planning to do much except grab a drink with our friends Jess and Fede and that drink turned into like 3 drinks (vermuth, which is sweet and easy to drink and also goes to my head fast), but accompanied with truffle pasta (which wasn’t as good as it sounds). We were only going to get a quick drink, but we ended up staying for hours before heading home around midnight. I always think the best nights are the nights that turn out like that.
Just for fun, an “Instagram vs Reality” moment – the night was great and we were having a lovely time, but at the same time, I quickly looked at my phone to check the time and saw a message from an employee that hurt his back at the gym earlier that day and wouldn’t be able to make it to work the next day, where he was supposed to work for over 7 hours and we were already short-staffed. Our team is quite large so the chance that someone has something at any given moment is quite large and to be honest, a huge pain in the ass and very hard for me to deal with emotionally and mentally (and physically when we have to go an run to “cover them”). Anyway, just a little glimpse into the restaurant world! We had to move people around, ask people to work extra hours, etc, to cover it, but it all worked out.
On Saturday, I got to sleep in!! I don’t know if it is mental load, or physical (I doubt it), but all I want to do whenever my alarm goes off (after sleeping for 8 hours) is to sleep more…a lot more. So it was nice to get to sleep in til almost 10 am and not worry about running off somewhere. Once we were up, we ate breakfast on the terrace — haven’t done that in probably a year or more so it was really nice. We ate meusli and it was quite good, and filling.
Around 1, we headed out to drive to Navacerrada for a day of drinking beers in the sun, eating typical Spanish mountain food (think hearty plates of fried eggs and potatoes, croquetas, fried artichokes (the best!), lots of meat, etc.) over the course of about 4 hours – Spanish style, and coffee and chocolate and churros in the ski station where we did not ski.
It was freezing up on that mountain and made me thankful for our warmer weather here in Madrid.
On Sunday, Luis and I worked at the shop to help them get through the day and a day it ended up being. Lots of people, lots of good food, and only like 2 annoyed people so I take that as a win.
We are back to Monday and I am writing from my windowless office – thanks for reading!
