Madrid Nightlife

Though we have been here nearly 3 months, we had never been out after 10pm until last night. Little did we know that the rest of Madrid doesn't even leave the house until after 10pm! We met Donna, Anna & Angel at the Sol Metro station at around 8pm. I took a photo of the wall of people shopping along Calle Preciados just south of Gran Via. Despite the financial crisis in the rest of the world, Madrid is seemingly unaffected. People shop, restaurants and bars are packed, everyone goes on vacation, etc. Then we went to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that serves food & wine from Galicia, where they also play bagpipes and sing this sad, eerie music that sounds like Portuguese fado. Anyway, as we ate our calamari, octopus, empanadas, little hot peppers, sausages, bbq potatoes, lotsa bread, 2 bottles of wine and mango juice for Ingrid cuz they don't sell soda, we were entertained by the young couple sitting behind us who entered as lovers, broke up over appetizers, reunited over dessert, then left hand-in-hand after she cried for 10 minutes. I was waiting for the guy to stab her with a fork or something. Oddly enough, the place doesn't use plates, so you all eat off the serving dish, which is why the cost was only 65 euros (100US) which is very reasonable. It was great! Then we stumbled upon a very cool New Orleans style jazz bar where we sat til after Midnite listening to cool American music and drinking more wine. When we finally left, close to 1am, there were traffic jams on every street and so many people, I thought it was early evening! Even the metro was crowded with people who were on their way out for a night on the town. We were told they party til 7 or 8 am and then take the morning trains home. When do they ever sleep?