Aqueducts, Castles, and Walls, oh my!

On Thursday, May 28th, we took a mini road trip to visit Segovia and Avila.

Segovia

Segovia is about an hour north of Madrid. On the way, we saw Fraco's tomb (the old dictator of Spain), and I got a history lesson from Pablo about him and the years following his death. Very interesting! Anyway, Segovia is a really cool town. The three highlights are:

The Aqueduct: built by the Romans in 50BC









The Cathedral
The Alcazar: a cool castle. Walt Disney modeled the Disney castle after the turrets of the Alcazar.

I just spent forever making a slide show and it kept freezing and wouldn't save. SOOO annoyed, but time to get some sleep before our road trip tomorrow. Slideshow will be up at a later date.

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Avila

Avila is a midevil town that is still completely surrounded by a huge wall. We spent a few hours here after touring Segovia and having lunch. It was about another hour to get to Avila.

View from outside the walls

Posing for a shot outside the walls

Time for a drink and a tapa

Cool cathedral inside the town

Looks like a fairy tale!

And Even More Madrid

Kelly and I spent Wednesday making it to all the spots in Madrid that we did not get to on Monday or Tuesday. There is just so much to do and see...

We started by going back to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). We wanted to check out the inside, where you can view a lot of the rooms. They were all decorated really elaborately. The palace has about 3000 rooms and we probably saw about 20. Some of the highlights were the throne room, the dining room, and a room covered in porcelain. Unfortunately we could not take pictures inside. One guy got yelled at by the security woman in one of the rooms. Kelly said that she was yelling he had to erase the picture.

Us with a view of the gardens behind us

And with the Cathedral behind us

The Palacio Real

After the Royal Palace and some wandering around, it was time for cervesa and tapas. We stopped at a cute bar near the Plaza Mayor.









The yummy calamari got us ready for the last of our tourist stops in Madrid:

La Cibeles- Unfortunately the fountain part is under construction.

Neptune Fountain

Madrid is bidding for the Olympics. We think their symbol looks like the turkey hands you make in kindergarten.

Atocha: train station in Madrid that is decorated like a tropical paradise!

Visit: www.kellyandpabloinmadrid.blogspot.com for more pics and info about this day :)

Feliz Cumpleaños Pablo!

Happy Birthday Pabs! On Tuesday night we celebrated Pablo's birthday. He didn't get off work until 10:30pm, so our party started a little late. His partner at work, Jesus, and his girlfriend came over to celebrate. Kelly made lots of food and we sat around and ate. I was lost a lot of the time because they were conversing in Spanish, but I had a great time observing.

Kelly baked cupcakes for Pablo and we bought trick candles at The American Store. For all of the Spaniards, it was there first time having cupcakes, which was fun! They all seemed to like them. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting! YUM!

This night also marked my first sips of Sidra. Sidra is a hard apple cider drink that comes from Pablo's region of Asturias. You are supposed to pour it from above your head into a glass you hold down low, then drink it while it is still all bubbly from the pour. Since we were in the apartment, I didn't get to do the fun pour way, but Pablo got a Sidra pump for his birthday that makes it fizz.

More Madrid

Exploring Madrid Day 2-

We started off the morning running some errands to get ready for Pablo's birthday. We went to Ipercor, which is like Spanish Target. If there is any question to if I liked this place, then you do not know me at all. There is one thing that made Ipercor even cooler than Target. There is a bar in the middle of the store!

After our errands, we took the metro to Plaza de España where there is a statue to Don Quixote. From there, we walked to Parque del Oeste. On one side of the park is an Egyptian temple called Templo de Debod. It dates back to the 4th century, but was given to Spain in 1970. The moved it in pieces to Madrid. You are able to go inside, but of course it was closed for siesta. We came back at the end of the day to see it though.

Once again, we had lunch out on a terrace by the park. That will never get old! Our next stop was La Rosaleda de Madrid, which is a huge, beautiful rose garden. There is a contest every year for the best rose and the judging had happened just last week.

Then we decided to be tourists again...time for the teleferico. It is a gondola that goes from the rose garden to the top of the Casa de Campo. It is an eleven minute ride to the top. There were really nice views. It seems Casa de Campo is a park that is really more for hiking and mountain biking, but there were great views of the city from the top.

After being touristy, we went back to see the inside of the Egyptian temple and then to have a beer with Pabs. We headed to a cute street that Kelly had found on a "spotted by a local" website. Then it was time to run a few more errands before Pablo's birthday party that night. One of our stops was at The American Store, so we could buy cake mix and dr. pepper.


Here is another slide show of photos:

Madrid Vision

Monday marked our first day exploring Madrid. We got free tickets to take the Madrid Vision, which is one of those dorky double decker, open topped buses. Yeah, so it was a little "touristy" and we were the only people under the age of 50 on the bus, but it got us all around Madrid very efficiently and gave a good overview of the city.

We visited a lot of the historical parts of Madrid in the morning...the royal palace, the cathedral, puerta del sol. For lunch and the rest of our afternoon, we went to the Park Retiro. It is a big, beautiful park, much like a golden gate park or central park. So far it has been my favorite part of Madrid! We took some silly pictures there, watched the row boats pass by on the lake, and visited the Crystal Palace. Here is a slide show of our fun times at the park:

The Spaniards love their jamon (ham)!
This place was a hit for us because they had clean bathrooms with toilet paper!

"Being spanish" having a drink at a cafe in the Plaza Mayor.

Kelly makes me take a lot of pictures by myself (not my favorite thing to do),
but here I am in the Plaza Mayor.

The Puerta del Sol-- said to be the center of Spain.

I didn't get the best shot of this, but it is people smoking cigarettes
in line to buy more cigarettes. I laughed.

Real Housewives of Las Tablas

My first two days in Spain were spent in a Madrid suburb area called Las Tablas. It is the land of seven story apartment buildings, dog parks and playgrounds on every corner, and children riding these rad tiny plastic motorcycle ¨bikes.¨ It felt a lot more like a modern suburb, than the Spain I had been imagining, but we had fun exploring the area over the weekend.

Saturday was spent trying to stay awake. It is the only way to get on European time without the effects of jetlag. I managed to make it until 9pm, which was my goal. 12 hours later I woke up and have had no problems adjusting to the time since. Saturday also marked my first Spanish lunch. Kelly made me a beautiful ¨welcome to spain" lunch.


Sunday we took long walk around Las Tablas. First we went to the "Chinese Store" where you can get just about anything. It is one of the very few stores open on Sundays. I bought a toothbrush since mine is apparently sitting on the bathroom counter at home still. Then we passed by a few restaurant/bars that we noted we wanted to try out soon. On one of our final stops before heading back home, we went to Kelly and Pablo's favorite bar, La Chabolu. There I had my very first spanish cervesa ("caña" -baby beer) and tapa. Our tapa was some fries with churizo.














The greatest part about Sunday was that I finally met Pablo!!! Yes, after SEVEN years of hearing about Kelly's Spanish love, I met the real live Pablo! :) He's great!

Other Randomness Around Las Tablas:

The prettiest cathedral I have ever seen!

Artistic Photo of the Day: Rose

Our first of a million pictures!