Finally, A Vacation On Instagram

In case you haven't heard, Spain is great.

This is my first newsletter, so my best guess is you’re here because you know me personally (hi friends!) or you follow me on Instagram (greetings, followers), which means you’re already aware that last weekend my dear friend Bryan (of Betches fame!) married his partner Antonio at a guh-guh-guh-gorgeous ceremony in Spain and I got to go. Sometimes good things happen to great people. It’s vacations like this that make me understand why in the pre-internet days people would literally invite friends over and make them look at their vacation photos on a projector (does anyone remember the ‘Rugrats’ episode about this?? Iconic). This is my version of that.

MADRID

Madrid, Spain is Madrid, Spain. Chances are you’ve heard of it. Danny and I haven’t left the country together since before the global pandemic so this trip was highly anticipated if not a little irresponsible given how we both keep saying we need to start saving money but, whatever. We will start saving money tomorrow. Promise. I’m usually one of those girls who makes a detailed itinerary for the entire trip with meticulously-researched restaurant and shopping guides (Taurus vibes), but since this trip was more of a glorified long weekend we opted not to do that and spent our Madrid time wandering the city eating and drinking at whatever random place we happened upon. This worked out pretty well since all the food and drink in Madrid is on point. My husband and I ate a large number of ham and cheese sandwiches (jamón y queso!!!), which are different and better than the ham and cheese sandwiches in the United States. America: guns, no healthcare, and sub-par ham and cheese sandwiches. (Sorry, I know I said I wouldn’t talk about politics here. Old habits, etc…)

The only hiccup came during dinner the first night when my Spanish translation skills failed while my husband was trying to order a vodka martini at a “subterranean” restaurant which I will not be linking because the lighting was bad and the vibes were off. I’m fairly proficient in Spanish and can hold light conversations about inconsequential topics (discussed seasons - i.e. spring, winter, fall, etc… - for like ten minutes with my Uber driver and felt like a God). I can also communicate basic information (I am going here, this is the food I want, I need to use the restroom, etc…), but when things get too complicated I tap out. Additionally, since all my Spanish is school Spanish I can’t really talk about anything fun like substituting vodka for gin in your martini. As a result, Danny ended up being brought two glasses, one had two giant olives in what looked like diluted olive juice, and the other was just a straight-up glass of vodka. In our confusion, Danny poured the vodka into the glass with the olives, only to realize that the glass was actually already full of gin and we’d created a dirty-gin-vodka-martini abomination to God and all things Holy. The server looked horrified but said nothing, and we only realized what had happened after Danny tasted it.

[danny with the offending drink in unnamed bad vibe subterranean bar]

Needless to say it was undrinkable though - not naming any names - there was one person at the table tried to say that we should finish it as to not “waste alcohol” and personally I am worried about that person (stage name Fat Carrie Bradshaw).

[one of these people wanted us to die]

The biggest surprise? How affordable everything was! On Thursday night we all went out with people from the wedding and Danny bought 7 shots of tequila for like $25. That ultimately turned out to be a bad decision, but it’s hard to beat the price.

PLACES WE STAYED

Staying somewhere is one of the most important parts of going on vacation. I’ve always said this. My biggest criteria for hotels are 1) a king-sized bed for my giant husband and 2) working AC for my giant husband. In 2019 Danny and I did not have either of these rules in place and we ended up getting so miserable and hot in a no-AC full-sized-bed hotel that we blew our final Euros moving hotels and spent our last five days in Berlin eating McDonald’s exclusively. We also may be wanted in Germany for fare evasion because of this, but that’s a story for another time.

For the most part, I have converted to a hotels over Airbnb person, for reasons already enumerated in this Caleb Hearon tweet. I just want someone else to clean my room, you know? I use Hotels.com to book everything cuz they have a partnership with my travel card (Capital One Venture Rewards, baby! Jennifer Garner says jump and I say how high!) plus they do a thing where you can earn free stays. I have been doing this for years and Madrid was the trip that finally put me over the edge to qualify for one free night - victory!

MADRID HOTEL 1: Woohoo Rooms Hortaleza

This cute little hotel was in such a nondescript building that when our cab driver dropped us off I briefly thought I’d been scammed. It looks like a random-ass Manhattan side-building you’d go to for improv practice in 2014. IYYK.

But it wasn’t! It was an actually cute hotel (maybe technically a hostel?) that takes up the second floor of the building and has rooms named after different famous locations. Ours was the Taj Mahal. Can only speak for the Taj, but we had a king bed and a balcony. Bathroom was small but good. Nowhere we stayed had a bath, which was sad because you know I’m a bath bitch. And I know people in Spain do take baths, because one of the Spanish wedding guests I met said “Ah! Just enough time to take a bath!” when we were all in a group talking about the 2 hours we had until dinner and I will never forget it for the rest of my days. The luxury. The confidence. I love it.

What we got to see of the area around the hotel (Calle Hortaleza) was great - lots of cute shops, tasty restaurants, and walking distance to everything else we wanted to do. It had West Village energy, which is to say cobblestone streets and a little gay. I say a little gay because there were a lot of rainbow flags everywhere and this one store with insanely ripped and sexy male mannequins. Could have just been for pride tho.

There was also an “erotic market” across the street where my husband and I bought condoms (YES my husband and I use CONDOMS when we FUCK because I am OFF HORMONAL BIRTH CONTROL and INCREDIBLY FERTILE - get with it!) and should have bought a vibrator but didn’t and then my vibrator died when we got to Pedraza which was, ultimately, very sad for everyone involved (me).

Now that you’ve gotten your first glimpse into my marital bed, here’s a photo of me on our cute balcony where I am visibly delirious from our red-eye flight. Moments after this photo was taken I would change into a completely new outfit, make plans with my friends, go outside for one second, cancel the plans, and take a nap for five hours. Queen shit, as they say:

[shirt by free people via a thredup, ass by god, jeans by khloé kardashian, unfortunately]

MADRID HOTEL 2: Sercotel Madrid Aeropuerto

Nothing too sexy about this one. Wanted a hotel near the airport on our last night for maximum going-to-the-airport-ability. It was clean with a decent bar situation, a comfortable bed, and an easily-bookable shuttle to your terminal which is pretty much all you can ask for in an airport hotel.

THINGS THAT I WORE:

You will notice that I chose to be a little cowgirl for most of this trip, which I did not regret for one second. If you ever have the opportunity to be a little cowgirl on a trip, do it. No one can stop you. In fact, it will only make you more powerful. Comfy shoes are a must in Madrid cuz the streets are quite cobblestone-ey and uneven. I also got a spray tan and a cut-and-color with my girl Susie before the trip because my religion stipulates you gotta be hot on vacation or it’s disrespectful to god.

This is what I wore out on Thursday night (photo taken immediately prior to my 5 hour nap). Madrid is hot, dry, and full brightness until 10:30pm so you wanna keep it breezy.

[tube top: urban outfitters (sorry), pants: thredup, shoes: rothy’s ‘the lace up’ in vanilla, bolo: buddy let me borrow it then moved to australia - haha! fool!, sunnies: don’t remember but honestly maybe cvs]

Wore this Friday during the day while we explored the city before our bus to Pedraza. Like I said, I wanted to be a lil cowgirl on this trip and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

[top: sidecca in pasadena, snake fanny: a lil roadside store in Joshua Tree on our honeymoon, cowboy hat: this store in arizona, shorts: amazon, baby!]

I also went shopping and bought a sweet yellow dress (pictured later) and an España fútbol jacket (never wore in Spain cuz it was too hot) at the adorable and affordable HUMANA vintage. I love vintage/thrift shopping on vacation because I find pieces I never could have gotten anywhere else. Plus wearing them reminds me of my trip. I’ve gotten some of my favorite items of clothing this way!

PEDRAZA

The wedding itself was in the magical little walled city of Pedraza. If you’re in Madrid and can make it out there for a night or a weekend, I’d highly recommend it. We took a bus organized by the grooms and it took about 90 minutes to get there. I’ll be honest and say I have no idea how you’d get there without some grooms organizing a bus or your own car, but there’s probably a way, right? Europeans are all about that public transport life.

The town has two hotels and a bunch of cute cafes and seems pretty much designed for weddings and events. Apparently, only 80 people actually live in the town, and the rest of the staff we saw were bussed in to work the weekend, which created a weird deja-vu every time you realized your server from the bar had become the bag check guy at your hotel who became the guy slicing prosciutto at the wedding (Yes, there was freshly sliced prosciutto at the wedding. Yum). One of the restaurants in town has three Michelin stars and served us a salad that truly went beyond the bounds of what any of us had ever understood a salad to be (a full chicken smothered in sauce). I guess that’s what you get for ordering salad on vacation. Like who did we think we were?

Additionally, my friends and I left the weekend with the outline for a perfect horror-comedy we’d like to film on location if anyone reading this is a wealthy producer looking to fund our vacation their next great project.

[I mean, just look at this cast!]

THE CASITA: We stayed in this Airbnb after failing to book either of the two wedding hotels in time (classic). It was absolutely adorable and easy to manage, though I think that would have been more difficult if we didn’t have at least one person in the group with passable Spanish (me! brag!) to talk to the hosts.

THE LOOKS: And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Friday was the preboda (rehearsal dinner) and I wore this two-piece set (it also comes in blue) and these earrings from Cider. I had never bought anything off Cider before and I was impressed! For the price, I was worried it’d be Shein quality, but I’d say it’s more Forever 21/H&M quality. Not amazing but I think I can wash it and it won’t fall apart immediately and it fit my body like a normal human body.

At the wedding, I wore this gorgeous dress I got at Elisa B in Pasadena. I bought it at a time when I was really down (got covid, lost a job, couldn’t see Into the Woods) and needed to spend money on a beautiful gown to wear in Spain and forget my troubles. It was expensive but it worked.

Also in yellow (I’ve heard yellow is gonna be a THING this year), here’s the sweet little dress I got a HUMANA, which I wore during the day on Saturday before the wedding itself. Note my own husband clowning me in the background. Unbelievable:

Howdy! (That’s not normally a sign-off, but today it is!) Let me know in the commentos if there’s anything from this newsletter you’d like me to spin off into a separate post. I love not having to come up with ideas myself, so pitch away!

besitos,

alise