Prost! 2

Ok sooo the next day, we got up at 6:30 and were in line at the beer tents by 8am. Then we were basically herded (think cattle) into the tent. You have to get there super early because tents fill up very quickly and everyone is pushing and shoving each other and it's quite the scene. But we finally got in and got our first beer of the day at 9am. As Allison put it, Breakfast of Champions. Then essentially you sit at your table and continue drinking, standing up every so often when everyone starts to yell PROST and gets up on the benches, and also singing the tune of the chorus of the White Stripes song 'Seven Nation Army'. I still don't really understand why this is such a popular tune, but it was repeated multiple times on that weekend (and also curiously this past weekend when I was in San Sebastian...)
After staying in the tents until the afternoon, we went back to our hotel to take a much needed nap. We woke up and went back downtown for dinner etc
The third day, we thought we had to be at the airport earlier than we actually did, so we just walked around downtown more and explored and went to the airport. Hard to handle more than 2 days of Oktoberfest.

Fast forward through a fun week in Madrid, including a great trip to the Prado (which I thorougly enjoyed becasue we had an extremely knowledgable, though long-winded, tourguide named Pablo), botellon-ing in the street with 60cent boxed wine (define: class) and clubbing at Vanilla, and then taking a trip up to San Sebastian with Allison and Annie this weekend.

San Seb was absolutely beautifulll- we didn't dress appropriately for the 80 degree weather on the first day, but that was our only snag. Otherwise, we had a great time touring the city itself- walking up a hill to see a giant Jesus statue and beautiful views, visiting a sideria (inadvertently crashing what we decided was a 15 year old's birthday party) and also going up to the town of Hondarribia which is on the border between Spain and France. We walked around the old city there which was beautiful and ate some very fresh and delicious food. We also took a 5 minute (uneventful) trip across the border to France, basically to say we did and to see if there was anything interesting in the town (there wasn't). Then we went back to San Sebastian, took a nap, and decided to treat ourselves to a fancy pants dinner. It was SO GOOD. We ate a a restaurant called La Muralla and I HIGHLY recommend it. You can choose from two menus - 35E or 38E- and it includes starters, main courses, desserts, wine and coffee. San Sebastian is known for it's fabulous food, and we really got to experience it at La Muralla. I literally took pictures of every part of the meal (I'm sure the waiters judged me but whatever) so you can check that out on Facebook if you're interested. Seriously phenomenal, and a great change from the bland food that we're used to here in Spain.
After this wonderful meal, we went out in old city and hit up a few bars/a club. Turned out to be a really fun night- we made lots of friends (duhhhh), and Allison picked up a few husbands (and a possible job in France?) and we met a fellow American who gave us some good club tips.
The next day (Sunday), it rained, but we just went tapas hopping and caught our bus at 4pm (after sleeping in of course) so it wasn't too much of a problem.
All in all a really great weekend. Allison and I are definitely sad to see Annie go though!