June 17—Lessons Learned: When a Party Is Over (Saludes a Real Madrid, Campeones!)

Dear Family and Friends,

Congratulations to Real Madrid, who won their final game of the season (and the cup as champions of the league) today! We enjoyed celebrating in Plaza de Cibeles with about 250,000 madrilenos and other folks!!

But … we also learned valuable lessons in recognizing signs that the party has ended:

1. When the championship team is no longer on the stage. 2. When the fireworks have ended.

3. When old people and very young children start running at you, away from the crowd.

4. When the prevalent cops can be seen in riot gear.

5. When the drunkards start throwing big beer bottles at said riot cops. 6. When said riot cops start shooting canisters of smoking stuff into the crowd, and one unknowning kid across the street almost loses an ear.

7. When drunken crowd members return fire with explosive cherry-bomb like materials. 8. When the cops point one of their guns at you!

9. When the soldier from Portugal that you have been talking to starts to yell for you to get out of the street, saying “Es mal! Es mal!”

10. When you listen to his advice and get out of the range of fire, then safely out of the area where the crowd had gathered.

In other words, we are fine!! Good times … (and we thought our Sunday would be nice and quiet for Fathers’ Day!!)

Oh, and to add to the vision of the day and night, here are some photos of the Plaza de Cibeles from earlier in the day:

Love,

Martha and Dani