Day 134: Real Madrid Match with Friends — Lobsy is….BACK!

by Margaret · Published May 19, 2019 · Updated May 22, 2019

The plan today was to exercise, do some school, explore the city and then deposit the kids with Lobsy around 8 pm — yes, Lobsy is BACK! — so that we could go to a 9 pm Real Madrid soccer match.

Well, it turns out the game got moved to 12 noon, which we only realized at about 9:30 am.

We’re nothing if not flexible! Teddy took over school while I ran off to catch an earlier class at yet another SoulCycle knockoff, Siclo.

Siclo was great! The closest thing I’ve encountered yet to a SoulCycle class (and trust me, people are out here are trying). It was actually hard, the branding was good, and the class was full — and people knew how to do the choreography. So much fun that I signed up to come back a bunch this week.

I showered at the gym and Uber’d to the stadium to meet Teddy and his old GameChanger colleague Dane, who was one of the very earliest employees — and *still* works at GC all the way from Madrid. Dane was joined by Romanian girlfriend Ouana, and the four of us took our seats in the upper level just in time for the game to start.

Fun to observe the differences at non-US pro sports games:

There’s no booze for sale in the entire stadium, ever
It’s very clean
No one is chit chatting and socializing — it’s all about sitting and watching
There’s a dedicated crazy fan section, and everyone else is chill
There’s almost no music/entertainment/annoying fan stuff like in the US
No vendors in the aisles

Real Madrid lost 0-2. Was the last game of their apparently abysmal season, so fans were over it.

After the game we obviously had to pick up some merch — full kit for James, scarf for Willer.

Then we rode with Dane and Ouana in their car to Retiro Park for a walk and beer and snacks by the water.

Eventually we parted ways and made our way over to Lobsy’s apartment, which she is renting with all of her sisters plus one sister-in-law and one cousin. This group of women loves to travel — and when Lobsy cooked up this idea while we were in Zimbabwe, they all jumped at the chance.

The apartment is new and lovely on a gorgeous street. The kids were bummed to see us because they were having so much fun getting all this aunty attention. They’d gone to lunch in the park and played card games and made “cootie catchers” — those paper fortune-telling games.

Eventually we scraped them out of that place and got them home for dinner and bed. We managed to watch a little more GOT…