Tablao and MORE Adventures

"Life is like a box of chocolates...

you never know what you are going to get" - Forrest's Mom

OK, so let me start with the cool thing that we did last Sunday night. Mark, Mane and myself went to watch a Flamenco show (called Tablao) at this place called El Corral de la Pacheca in the middle of Madrid. Flamenco is a gypsie dance, where the men and women dance to the rythm of acoustic guitars, clapping hands, percusion, and singing gypsie voices (more like screaming voices if you ask me). At first glance all these parts seem to be playing at their own pace and in a very "messy" (desordenado) way, but after a little while you can hear that the songs actually have a structure and defined pace and rythm. The dance is like tap dance, where the dancers play with their feet on the wooden floor and make CRAZY steps and sounds and demonstrate an incredible fitness (estado fisico) and talent. So we enjoyed a couple jars of Sangria and some tapas watching the show! The show went on for an hour and a half, until 12:00:00 sharp!!! I am not exaggerating! They played and played forever and when midnight hit, they stopped, just as if they were scared of turning into a pumpkin. Very funny!

Spain is incredible. So much to do, so much to see... I really hope I can come back in the future. One warning though, service at restaurants is TERRIBLE! If you ask for something nicely you will not get it, period. Don't be afraid to be boss them around if you are ever on these latitudes. That's if you ever want to eat before they close the restaurant.

Now, how about what happened to us?! Mark played great in Madrid! After we finished (he tied for 6th) he was informed that he was invited to a European Tour event this week in France. This is a huge deal, because it is valid for the Challenge Tour rankings (the tour Mark is playing) and since it is part of the European Tour, it has a HUGE purse compared to a "normal" Challenge Tour event. So last night we had to change EVERYTHING in a hurry! Instead of going to Finland to the scheduled Challenge Tour event, we had to switch all plans to go to St. Omer in France. We hustled on the internet making all kinds of reservations, got up at 5am Monday morning, took a plane to Paris, took a car to St. Omer (2 and a half hour drive), we get to the course and we find out Mark is NOT in the tournament!!! Happens that a big name on the European Tour asked for an invitation to this tournament (Paul McGinley) so there was 1 invitation less for the Challenge Tour, which happened to be Mark. A miscommunication between the people in charge led us to this. Right now I am in Calais (next to the Cannal de la Manche tunnel) making arrangements to go BACK to Finland... how crazy is this?!

We are in the process of trying to get to Helsinki, so hopefully after all the craziness goes by, the next post will be from there, and we are playing!!

au revoir!

M

ps. the picture is the view from our hotel in Cobena (Madrid suburb) over the town church and overlooking downtown Madrid in the horizon... pretty neat!