Spanish Connection: October 2017

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record starting every post with an appology for now blogging more often...so I'll stop now.

My days race by in a blur of work, cooking, cleaning, walking Bela, keeping up with Emily and squeezing in some studying when Emily goes down for her nap. Sometimes it doesn't seem as though I've necessarily done anything all day, yet I haven't had a free moment to sit down and gather my thoughts. So I am constantly composing posts in my mind, but they never manifest themselves in writing.

We met up with Francisco for lunch. This is his university.

Among the many things that I have been wanting to post about, our recent weekend in Madrid is top on my list. That's right, we made an excursion to the capital to show Natalie a bit more of Spain, and of course Madrid is a must in an of itself (shhhh! I still have never taken my parents!). So we took advantage of the long weekend in honor of El día de la Hispanidad (Columbus Day for you), and headed north on the high speed train early Thursday morning from Seville after a full day Wednesday of sight-seeing in the Andalusian capital.

We stayed in a great little apartment in central Madrid for the three nights we were there. Finding lodging for our stay was quite an ordeal and really deserving of its own post. Suffice it to say that we didn't have assured accomodations until around 2am the Tuesday prior to our Thursday departure...and it wasn't 100% confirmed until mid-day Wednesday! We were hotel/apartment hunting right up to the very last minute and places were literally being booked out from under us. It was madness. In then end we had to spend more than we'd originally planned to spend, but it was all very much worth it.

Breakfast on the train: a downside/upside to our last min. booking was the "economy" seats were all full on the train! In "first" class you get fed! :)

Natalie outside the Prado Museum.

As it turns out, we were the first guests to be staying in the apartment as it was newly aquired by the agency the does the vacation rentals. It was small, as it to be expected and the glass doors on the bedroom and bathroom were more appropriate for a couple than a family, but it was very clean and very cool and quiet. We even had a little patio and I was very grateful that it ended up being on the ground floor, although the building did have an elevator.

Our itenerary was pretty packed, but we did a very good job, I thought, of maintaining a balance between sight-seeing and relaxing. We visited the Prado Museum, the wax museum, the Royal Palace, Plaza Mayor, the Buen Retiro Park and wandered our way through several markets and fun neighborhoods; but we also had some down time every day and even were able to nap a little one day. Natalie even found a little theater that did "micro" performances (15 min plays) and we went to one of their performances for children, which ended up being lots of fun and a great experience for Emily.

Emily dancing in the apartment. :)

Unfortunately the pre-trip stress of looking for a place to stay manifested itself as a nasty cold, and so I was feeling a little achy for most of our visit and Saturday I even lost my voice! But I am my mother's daughter and so was determined to make the most of my weekend regardless of my body's rebellion. I loaded up with kleenex, asprin and vitamins walked my way all over the city (carrying Emily for much of the time since I absolutely HATE strollers and refused to bring one). Needless to say, I am still recovering. Teaching all week just above a whisper hasn't really helped my vocal cords. I am still quite horse...but I'm a bit more caught up on sleep and don't feel sick anymore at least.

The highlights for Emily were chasing pidgeons in the Retiro Park and running into Peppa Pig in Plaza Mayor! She was SOOOO excited about that! It was all I could do to get her to come with me when it was time to continue looking for a place to eat, and all through dinner she insisted that Peppa was "outside waiting for" us. :)

Emily was a real little trooper through it all. The wax museum was understandably low on her list...the statues were a little creepy looking. They had figures from Spanish and world history as well as celebrities from more recent history and present day. She insisted that I carry her through the whole museum and would only agree to one picture with some of the players on the Spanish National Football (soccer) team--silly Spaniard!

Velazquez painting his famous "Las Meninas" at the wax museum.

Can you tell Emily's a little freaked out?

Visiting the Prado was a whole other experience with Emily, too. We looked for animals in the different paintings, pointed out colors and admired the flowers in the Dutch paintings. Emily was duely impressed with Velazquez and Goya. She especially liked the princess paintings since she has recently become obsessed with princesses. This was a good introduction to Spanish culture for her as well as Natalie, though I'm sure Natalie got a lot more from the visit than Em, although we did not opt for the audio guides. I don't think Emily would probably have let us really listen to them.

I suppose travelling with a nearly three-year-old really marked our pace, but both Natalie and my sick self were happy to have breaks from the heat and being on our feet so much. Saturday we had a picnic lunch in the park after our morning theater performance and it was fantastic just to sit in the shade on the grass and enjoy weather.

Sunday we said goodbye to our cozy apartment, caught the one o'clock train home and that was it.

I'll leave you with some more pictures: