Our Madrid Adventure...Part 2

Rick Steves, the travel guide, recommends "the Madrid pub-crawl" for a great dining experience in Madrid. I was out voted 4 to 1 and we ended up eating at an all you can eat place instead. Later, when I asked my kids what their favorite experience in Madrid was, Addy was quick to say ,"The all you can eat pasta!" You can see that she really enjoyed it...

I think Alex had about four pieces of pizza. And did I mention that there were all you can eat potato chips too? Very fancy, and just what the kids wanted.

We then went to the Puerta del Sol and while Cassy and Addy ran into a shop, the boys had a sword fight with their umbrellas. The light was beautiful.

Our hotel and the view from the hotel up one of the streets.

The next day we took a self guided walk from Puerta del Sol to the Royal Palace. We started with the bear statue, a symbol of Madrid, in the Puerta del Sol. There used to be lots of bears in the hunting grounds around Madrid.

Then we went to put our feet at "kilometer zero", the very center of Spain.

One of the best parts of the tour was a stop at La Mallorquina for pastries and ColaCao (a hot chocolate-y drink). I didn't think to take the picture until after we had gobbled up all of our treats.

Next, we were off to Plaza Mayor. It is a large plaza that has quite a bit of history, especially with the Inquisition. Apparently this is the place where many people were killed. They built large sections of bleachers so people could watch. Luckily, the bleachers are gone and the plaza is now a fun, touristy spot to have your picture taken with lots of different characters. I think we saw Puss In Boots, Bob Esponja, and best of all a plump (skin tight suited) spider man with a little spider man doll that had a belly too.

The best part of the day was when I issued a challege to anyone willing to eat a bocadillo de calamares (fried squid ring sandwich)...finish the whole sandwich and get 5 Euros. Cassy took on the challenge and although she was gagging with the final three bites, she was able to eat the whole thing. She tried to up the ante to 6 Euros for the last few bites, but I told her 5 Euros, take it or leave it.

You can see a bit of a gag coming on.

There was a small square with a statue honoring those who had died on this street in 1906. King Alfonso XIII and his new bride were parading down the street following their wedding, when a terrorist threw a bomb tied to a bouquet at the royals. The bomb missed the royals, but killed 23 others.

We skipped the tour of the cathedral and headed straight to the Royal Palace. It was built by Philip V in the 1700's. He is actually Louis XIV's grandson and was born and raised in France so the palace was very French and very fancy. I think the kids liked the souvenir shop best. Addy ended up getting a Spanish cookbook with lots of recipes that have anchovies in them (she loves it and takes it everywhere) and the boys bought swords and had a sword fight, in the wind and rain, on the grounds of the palace. Cassy demanded the equivalent of a souvenir in money, so she got 3,50 euros (to buy lipstick).

After lunch we headed over to the Reina Sofia Museum. This museum features modern art. They have lots of Picasso, Miro, and Dali paintings. We were most excited to see Picasso's famous painting, "Guernica". It depicts the sadness and horror of war. It is a very moving painting and was so much bigger than we had imagined it to be. The museum also features films. We all enjoyed watching a funny silent film and another silent film showing scenes from the Spanish Civil War. After a very busy day we were glad to go to the park for a while and head back to the hotel for some R&R.

Our Madrid Adventure.....Part 1

We had a six hour bus ride to Madrid. At the halfway point the bus stops at a bus company owned store where you can by lunch and snacks. As we were checking out, my credit card (the only one I had with me) would not work. Serious panic. I don't like to travel with every credit card or with a ton of money in case we get pickpocketed (which the guide books warn us of all the time). So I was travelling light and we probably would have needed to do some pickpocketing of our own without a credit card. Luckily I was finally able to make a connection with my very limited Spanish on the phone so that I could call the credit card company. When we arrived in Spain the phone company texted me to inform me how to make outgoing calls to the U.S. Well, they gave me bad info. Even the guy I spoke with on the phone gave me bad info, but I was able to figure out the right amount of zeroes and make the connection, although I couldn't make a call to Matt without inputting a code (but now I can without the code, magically, now that we are safe in Sevilla). The credit card info was resolved, but not until about 11pm. Luckily, I had given the credit card when I made our hotel reservation and they didn't ask for it again on arrival (which our last hotel did). It was a great start for our trip!

Our first day we basically just got settled and went to dinner for Cassidy's birthday, which was very fun. We also had to stop at the Ben and Jerry's just across the street/sidewalk from our hotel. On our way to dinner, in the heart of the tourist district, there were a few red light spots and the street scene was very interesting. There were quite a few fancy ladies looking for work. Apparently it is legal in Madrid to be a prostitute, but illegal to be a pimp.

Our hotel was on the Puerta Del Sol, the heart of Madrid. Here are some rainy pics...

The next day we were off to the Prado museum to see some of the works of art that we have been studying about. We had our picture taken in front of the statue of the famous Spanish artist Velazquez. He painted one of the most famous paintings in the history of art, Las Meninas, which shows the artist in the painting and the perspective from the subject being drawn. We have also been reading a book called I, Juan de Pareja. It is a story from the perspective of Velazuez' slave, Juan de Pareja, and sheds light on the painter and the time in which he lived.

We also looked around at the paintings of El Greco and Goya, both of whom we had studied a little about. We were able to see the real Goya painting of the naked lady that hangs above our bed. We decided ours is a very bad knock off. Apparently it was quite scandalous to paint a nude painting at the time so he painted both a nude and a clothed painting of the same woman in the same pose. I read somewhere that they hid the nude painting hidden behind the clothed one when any of the clergy came into the room. Unfortunately the paintings have been seperated and we only got to see the nude one.

After visiting the Prado we walked to Retiro park. I had promised ice cream for good behavior at the museum and we were in search of ice cream. Retiro park is beautiful and huge. It used to be royal gardens, but in the 1700's King Charles made it public. We made our way past many closed ice cream stands (with much grumbling from the kids who wanted to go back to the hotel and eat at Ben and Jerry's again). But we finally made it to the lake in the middle of the park and found an ice cream place that was selling Ben and Jerry's! Things were looking up. We ate our ice cream in a beautiful setting, listening to a man sing Beatles songs with a Spanish accent. It was the best! After our ice cream, we decided to go for a row on the lake. We couldn't all go in one boat and Cassy couldn't have any one else in her boat due to age restrictions. It was fun watching Cassy learn how to row!

On the way out of the park, we found the best playground in all of Spain! It had really modern, fun and challenging equipment and the kids voted it the best.