Holiday in Spain

Hola amigos!  It's been a while since I posted about our adventures so I have a lot to catch up on!  I'll start with our trip to Madrid, Spain - which was a blast!  We spent almost a week walking around the city and eating all sorts of Spanish foods, which I'll get into later on (I could write many pages about all the foods we ate, but I'll try to restrain myself).  Let's get going then, shall we?

We took a short plane ride from Pisa, Italy to Madrid, during which we caught up on some sleep (we had to get to the airport at 5 am!).  From the airport we took the metro to the neighborhood where our apartment was, but when we got there we were locked out.  Oh no!  After a few calls to the landlord, we got everything straightened out and were able to check in, drop off our backpacks and start our adventure.  What to do, where to go?  We didn't know so we just started walking around hoping to find something fun to do.  Compared to many of the other places we've been travelling to in Europe, Madrid doesn't have as many big, famous landmarks that normally draw large crowds of tourists.  For example, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Rome has ruins everywhere you look and Venice is a city on the water.  Despite this, we still found plenty of things to do (even though most of those things had to do with us eating food).

These little buggers look like fun to eat, don't they?  These animals are called perceves and they are supposed to be really tasty (we didn't try any this time around, though).

We didn't get very far before our stomachs told us we better stop for a quick fill-up. Luckily for us, Spanish food is ridiculously good! Spain is known for a particular style of food called "tapas", which is defined best by a character from a British TV show that Justin likes to watch as "tiny food from Spain". That's exactly what it is, more or less. There are tapas bars on every corner in Madrid where you have your choice of albóndigas (meatballs), croquettas (fried, cheesy, potato-y balls of deliciousness), olivos (Spanish olives are very famous from the area), patatas bravas (crispy potatoes with a spicy red sauce), paella (a spiced rice dish with seafood)...and the list goes on for miles. Keep in mind that tapas are really just a snack to have before you eat dinner, which in many European countries doesn't start until 8 pm or later. Here's a picture of me with the paella we decided to get for our first official Spanish meal.

Madrid is a very big city with over 3,000,000 people living within the city itself - not to mention all of the tourists.  Since we were there before the big tourist rush, it wasn't as busy as it would be in the middle of the summer.  I'm sure glad we went when we did because even though most of the tourists hadn't showed up yet, the place was busy!  This picture is from Plaza Mayor.  If you look closely you can even see Mickey Mouse!

The metro system in Madrid was very efficient, but we decided that it would still be best to walk everywhere. We didn't want to miss out on anything between points A and B! And walk we did: we covered the south, north, east and west on foot over the duration of our stay. We went through a few old churches, a museum, parks and even rowed a boat around a man-made lake! I tried my hand at rowing but I could only manage to make us go around in circles.

During one of our wandering trips, we stumbled upon a market in a little park.  There were street vendors set up selling all sorts of candies, clothes and knick-knacks.  There was even a small band of minstrel elves (they had pointy ears and everything!) playing music and parading around.

One of our best finds during the trip was, you guessed it, food related.  There was an enclosed market area in one of the neighborhoods away from the hustle and bustle of the downtown area that had enough different types of food you could literally be locked in that building for months before you would get sick of it!  This magical market was located in Plaza de San Miguel (Saint Michael's Square), a little ways west of the downtown area.  This place was so good that we had to go a couple times!  We had olivos, croquettas (my favorite tapas!), salmon on toasted bread, all kinds of cheese, empanadas (meat-filled pastries), tiny sandwiches...even sushi!  After all of this food, we felt that we just had to get a sampling of the desserts too so we picked up a few macaroons (colorful cookies that are both soft and crunchy), an apple crepe sort of thing and a few candies.  In all, a pretty good haul for the three of us!  We went to this market a couple times in the evening for dinner, but during the day, they also have fresh fruit, vegetables and seafood.

OK, OK enough about food already.  Since we were eating so much, we had to find some way to burn off all that energy so we took a walk around the Parque del Buen Retiro ("Park of Pleasant Retreat" in English), which is the same park where we rowed around in the boat.  This park is huuuuuuge!  We walked around different areas two or three different days and didn't see everything.  There are a lot of walking paths, fountains and gardens to keep a person busy for a long time.  We came at the perfect time, too, with all of the flowers and plants at their Spring peak.

We saw some crazy looking trees...

...and even woke up some sleeping cats!

Well that was a delicious...I mean fun...trip to Madrid!  As with all vacations though, this one had to end before we were ready.  Oh well, back to Italy for a little while to recover from all the croquettas we ate!  Until our next adventure, this is Flat Stanley saying "Adios amigos!"