sundays in la latina

Drinking all day is not socially acceptable...in America. Unless you're at barbecue, spending all day in the sun hanging out and kicking back copas would be considered an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. It's not a normal Sunday. However. This blog is about Spain, and as I am American, this is my perspective on all things Spanish, including the Sunday tradition of peeling yourself out of bed on Sunday morning (let's be honest, afternoon) and plopping yourself down on a terrace to drown your hangover with an ice-cold beverage. Many of us don't make it to La Latina, which is the place to be, since it's far and we're lazy. For those who do, as I did today, it is truly wonderful. After starting the morning off at the Reina Sofia Museum at the Photo España exhibition (a photography festival that takes over the city's museums and galleries the month of June), we headed south to La Latina, hoping for a spot in the sun. After a little bit of wandering down Calle Cava Baja (where there aren't any terraces, but a lot of fantastic tapas bars), we scaled the stairs of El Viajero and scored a spot on the roof. After all the stairs, we were clearly hungry, so we proceeded to eat sepia a la plancha (grilled octopus) and drink tintos de verano (red wine mixed with lemon Fanta) for the majority of the day. I've got the sunburn to prove it. Exhausted after so much exertion, we, along with all the other madrileños crawl our way back to our apartments, curling into bed and falling asleep, full, tan, and slightly buzzed. Oh, Sunday.