Every year for some number of years now Madrid has this big street party that lasts until 6 a.m. There are a large variety of arts things that happen, concerts, and installations of all kinds at a whole bunch of venues around the center of the city. It was last Saturday. If you read the previous post, you already know, I was tired. But the Noche en Blanco cannot be denied. Plans were made to meet up at Shelby’s, which is a shared apartment with up to 10 people. It seems little wild, but also really interesting. Some people are there for one months, others for six or more and there are folks from everywhere. So Shelby’s there. He made some food, we drank some booze, some Brazilians, an Argentine and a Canadian showed up, there was much loudness and then Morgan and Oriana showed up. More eating, drinking (booze, juice, coca-cola, lemon soda and coffee, in any combo or not) and then we set off, into the night.
Mostly we saw other people. Tens of thousands of them. We were trying to head towards the Puerto de Alcala to be illuminated by giant lights, but we were waylaid by a giant crowd waiting to see a tightrope walker. It is pretty incredible to be on the main streets of Madrid in the middle of the night with so many people. They shut the city down for this night. It’s pretty 
amazing when it’s happening to see no traffic except of foot and bike and stroller and rollerblade, but then when you see those same spaces occupied by bazillions of cars its even wilder. Then, the tightrope walked chickened out because of the wind and we 4 were scattered in the crowd.
We were eventually reunited, but in the end I went home only really having seen some inflated tubes stuck to the side of a building and some light up kisses projected on another.
