The Trip – Part Two – Spain

If I had one word for Madrid it is ‘food’. By the time we hit Spain I was feeling the affects of not being able to sleep well at night. For some reason, I slept great for almost 19 years without Henry in my bed, but ever since 1996 have had a hard time sleeping without his warmth. I was seriously cold the entire trip and couldn’t get my body to feel tired at night and alert in the morning. Um, now that I type that out I realize I have the same problem in the states. So being a natural night-owl and trying to adjust to six hours ahead equals a problem. But moving on….

Madrid is a pretty city… it is more spread out than Lisbon, so we used the metro system more. However, we did some walking the last day around the city and found out given the time we could have walked above ground a little more.

The Puerta de Alcala located up from the Plaza de Cibeles

The Palacio Real, AKA the Palacio Tease….

It is a long and convoluted story, but Bridget and I tried on three separate days to get into this Palace. Arriving in Madrid on a Sunday and being there on a national holiday in which the king ended a parade at this palace and then spent the night, lent to having a very hard time figuring out when the palace is actually open to tourists! We heard it is second to Versailles on buildings of grandeur, but short of a little disappointment at not being able to get in, we harbor no hard feelings. Really, we don’t.

Plaza Mayor….

Plaza Mayor is where things (namely food) happen. It is central to a lot of the things we wanted to do. First, The Mercado de San Miguel is located about a block off the plaza. The Mercado de San Miguel was one of our highlights from Madrid. I told you… food.

It is an building that used to house stalls for the butcher, baker, et al… much like a farmer’s market. However, it started declining in the 90s and in 2009 was reopened as a Tapas bar of sorts. The market is lined with stalls from different vendors. You basically point and pay as you go and then take all your plunder to the center of the building where there is first-come-first-serve seating. It was a mad house, but a really fun experience. I had the best… and I mean the best, Pistachio Petite Four from the bakery stall here. Yum!

Toledo is hard to capture in three pictures. It was our favorite city in our Spain portion of the trip. You come out of the train station, around the corner, and are confronted with a beautiful walled city that withstood Moors, Crusaders, and Don Quixote. The moorish influence on architecture is very prevalent in Toledo.

The Puerta del Sol.

The cathedral is impossible to capture on film. It is situated on narrow streets and is too imposing to fit in the frame. This is the only cathedral I’ve been in that everywhere you look there is a sculpture or precious metal or some great masterpiece.

The last night in Madrid, we ate at El Sobrino del Botin, the oldest restaurant IN THE WORLD, established in 1725. It was quaint and delicious. It is worth going to, but don’t forget to make reservations!

A look into the kitchen of El Sobrino del Botin.

At some point we had to come back to our husbands and kids. As I looked over the French countryside I thought of how nice it was to get away from life for a week. To not have to think about any sort of responsibility.

But the truth is I was glad to go home. I was ready to hold my kids again and sleep with my husband. Ask me again in a year… I’ll probably be ready for another trip!