Seilers en Madrid.....I finally finished it!!!

Alright, so I guess it is time to write the second half of this update....our trip to Madrid!!! I'll pick up right where I left off. Oh but first, I am still trying to insert pictures into the other blog...sometimes blogger just doesn't want me to. But here is a link to my photo album on Facebook that hopefully everyone can see:

My Family Does Spain: Sevilla y Madrid!

And here is a link to Jilly's album:

I Have a Kit Kat

Ok, onto the blog!

FRIDAY
So we had a quick flight from Sevilla to Madrid (it's only about 45 minutes), and then hopped into a cab to go to our hotel. The traffic was pretty bad at that point in the day, which gave my dad plenty of time to make friends with the cab driver and embarass us with his once again, really awful Spanish. We got to the hotel and it was AMAZING! Even nicer than the first one!! So nice in fact, that there were swarms of Russians staying there because the president of Russia was arriving in Madrid on Sunday and staying at our hotel!

Our hotel at night!

Once we got settled into our gorgeous rooms, we went out to grab some lunch at this place we were recommended called Los Gatos. The waiter recommended us some dishes, so we got those. They were very good....except then we realized we had fallen into the restaurant's major tourist trap and had gotten totally ripped off due to how we ordered. Major bummer, but we learned our lesson. After lunch, we set out to do some exploring. We went to Plaza Mayor, one of the most famous sights in Madrid. We walked around there for a while, did some shopping, and then stopped for some traditional churros con chocolate at a little churro shop. Churros here are very different than what we think they are...they dont have any cinnamon and sugar on them, they're just fried stick of dough. Some people eat them plain, but the BEST way is to order them with chocolate (it's like a very thick hot chocolate) and dip them in. Yum!

The girls in Plaza Mayor!

It was then time for to go back to the hotel for a siesta, of course. After siesta, we got ready, and headed out to a late (well, normal for Spain, late for my parents!) dinner around 10:00. We ended up at an Argentinian restaurant which was DELICIOUS. I hadn't had any sort of steak since being here, so it was quite the treat! My dad ate so much steak we think he might have eaten a whole cow...not sure though. It was a great dinner, and then we walked around Madrid a little in an attempt to work off some of the huge dinner we just ate. Madrid is pretty at night all lit up! After a nice walk cut short by Jilly complaining about her shoes, we went back to the hotel, where we did some catching up online and called it a night.

SATURDAY
Wow, it has been so long since my family was actually here I hope I can remember well enough to do this update! Haha. But here goes!

So Saturday morning we woke up early once again, had some great hotel breakfast with all the Russians, and headed off for the day. Our first stop was the famous Museo del Prado (the Prado Museum)! Some of us were more excited than others, as it is a museum filled with very famous paintings....but very old and religious-themed famous paintings. Once we got in, my dad of course purchased an audioguide right away. You know, those little walkie-talkie looking things that type in a number, hold it up to your ear, and get to hear great information about what you're looking at. We spent about an hour and a half at the museum (one really could spend the entire day there) which gave us enough time to see all the famous paintings we wanted to see and then some. It was very cool for me to see some of these paintings that I've been learning about in my Spanish classes since high school. It was also just cool to see so many paintings by such famous artists that lived centuries ago (Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Murillo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Botticelli, etc!).

After the Prado, we stopped back at the hotel to grab some free apples (my dad was all over those), then took a cab to our next stop for the day- El Palacio Real (the Royal Palace). This is where the King and Queen of Spain still have their permanent residence!! Unfortunately, we didn't run into them while we were there. But anwyays, the Palace from the outside was really amazing, it is so big and breathtaking, so I was excited to go in! There was a pretty long line to get in, so of course my mom, dad, and I waited in line while Jilly sat down a few yards away. What a champ! Once we got in, my dad obviously got us some more audioguides. I have to say, I definitely learned a lot...but did not look so cool. Oh well!

Here is me and Jilly in the main Plaza inside the gates of the Palace. Kinda big right??

As for the inside of the Palace, it absolutely amazing. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures, but it was just SO grand. Fit for a king and queen! Really, every single room was just more spectacular than the next. So all in all, the palace was great!

Next we decided to do a little walking to see some more cool sights. We walked in the general direction of where we wanted to go next, but saw lots of cool things on the way (plazas, statues, cute doggies!). We made our way over to Gran Vía street, which is a hugeee street running through the central part of Madrid with tons of restaurants, hotels, and shops. After much debate on where we should make a pitstop for lunch, we settled on an Italian restaurant that looked like it had some good pizzas that we could split. Well, the pizza was great, but the service was literally the worst any of us had ever experienced in our lives. It was actually pretty hilarious by the end of the meal because our waitress was just SO bad it was entertaining. Not even just bad, but all around rude. We told her we wanted to order right away and she literally just ignored us for 10 minutes until she felt she was ready to take our order. Then when she finally was ready, she decided to clean out her pad of paper and dropped paper scraps all over my lap. Haha there are many more examples but I think you get the point. Needless to say, my dad did not feel bad this time about not leaving a tip (you don't really tip in Spain- my dad had a VERY VERY hard time with this).

After lunch we walked a little more on Gran Vía, then decided to take a cab to our next destination- el Museo Reina Sofía (The Queen Sofia Museum). Our dogs were really barking after all the walking, so a cab was pretty much necessary. While this museum had a lot more contemporary and less religious paintings in it, the setup was weird so it was a little bit of a struggle getting through it by the end. The highlights of the museum were seeing the Picasso and Dalí collections (two of my favorite artists). We even got to see Guernica- one of Picasso's most famous works!

After that museum, we headed back to the hotel for a MUCH needed siesta. On the way though, we happened to run into this awesome vertical garden wall thingy!! It was literally a giant wall with amazing vegetation covering the whole thing. It was so cool- like a jungle wall in the middle of a busy block in the center of Madrid!!

Mom and dad in front of the wall!!

So we got back to the hotel and had an excellent siesta, got ready, and hung out a little before going to dinner on our last night all together :(. We went to this Italian restaurant that we had tried to go to the night before called La Creazione. It was a really nice restaurant, and a REALLY great meal. I hadn't had Italian food since being here either, so once again it was a nice treat! We tried to eat as slowly as possible and enjoy the meal, and not be the gluttonous Americans that we really are...we had some success haha. After our delicious meal, we went on a hunt for gelato. It was surprisingly hard to find gelato in Madrid at night!! We finally did find some though, and my dad got some lemon sorbet. While walking though we got to see this cool area of Madrid where a lot of tapas bars and restaurants were, my family was surprised at how alive the city was at such a late hour with young and old people alike! That's Spain for you....they're a lot less lame than us Americans.

My fam out on the street in Madrid....with some random guy smiling for my picture??

We finally got back to the hotel and called it a night after a very busy day in the capital of Spain!

SUNDAY
Unfortunately, Sunday was the day that Jilly had to leave us. We were all very sad that she was leaving, but I think she had a pretty great first experience in Europe!! Too bad it was so short though! We had some breakfast and then my dad took a cab with Jilly to the airport, while my mom and I headed out for a little shopping. We got some scarves, some gifts, I got some shoes, and also just did some looking around at cool shops. It was very fun. Then my dad met up with us for a little more shopping (he obviously loved it), and a little more walking around.

We stopped to take some touristy pics with the cows in Madrid- how could we not!

Then we stopped back at the hotel for some free apples (duh) and went just across the street to our final art museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. This museum has a great collection of Impressionist and Expressionist paintings from Europe and America. We saw absolutely gorgeous paintings by Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Van Gogh. This was definitely more our type of art- beautiful impressionist and post-impressionist landscape and people paintings. Although our feet were once again pretty tired, we saw all the collections we wanted to see in that museum and really enjoyed it!

After the museum we wanted to find a little bite to eat, and figured we would go to a random tapas place to just get some little sandwiches or something. My dad found a place he thought was good, so we went in there and sat down. Our waiter was very nice, and told us he would make us an arrangement of little tostadas (different tapas on little pieces of bread). I told him I wasn't sure what the things on the menu were though (all Spanish foods I had never heard of), and he said he'd makes ones we would like. I said I don't know if we will like a lot of the things, and he replied by asking if we liked fish, to which I responded yes (my dad was getting ham and cheese, so I figured my mom and I would be great with fish). WELL, by fish, this man did NOT mean the kind of fish I was thinking of. About 10 minutes later, our waiter comes out with just about the nastiest looking food I think I have ever seen. There were some tostadas with salmon, some with tomatoes which seemed fine, but got completely overshadowed by the ACTUAL WORM-LOOKING SPECIMENS ON BREAD that were also on our plate. We had a moment of panic, but explained to him that we didn't think we liked any of these things, and he very nicely took it back. We all ate ham and cheese sandwiches.

Turns out the nasty worm babies were actually baby eels. I would post a picture of what they look like on here, but then I would never be able to look at my own blog again, so I'm gonna refrain. If you're feeling daring though, feel free to do a google image search for "gulas" and enjoy.

After "lunch" we headed back to the hotel for a rather early but much needed siesta. We had to do a little research in order to find a restaurant for dinner, as a lot of restaurants are closed on Sunday nights. Actually, a lot of stores and restaurants are closed in general on Sunday in Spain because they are very Catholic. But we ended up at this really great paella restaurant called La Barraca, where we had some delicious paella with veggies, chicken, pork, and seafood in it. It was great! I even ate the seafood! Well, the calamari. Yes, I eat calamari now! Aaron, get excited for when you come! Haha. After the paella my dad and I split some delicious ice cream (we do love our desserts), and then we headed back to the hotel after walking around for a little.

I was sad that it was my last night, so I tried to make my parents stay up as long as possible which was semi successful haha. We went to bed pretty late, but there were some issues, as SOME people were snoring, not to name names.

MONDAY
On Monday we woke up early, had breakfast, and decided to find this old area of Madrid that was supposed to be really cool. We had our maps and everything, but for some reason failed miserably at what we were looking for. We even asked people, but they had no idea what we were talking about. Oh well, it was fun just exploring Madrid, and we ended up in some cute little shopping areas.

My mom and me in front of an adorable little confectionery we stopped in.

We then decided to go to el Parque Retiro...but accidentally ended up at the Botanical Gardens of Madrid. We figured this would be a cool place to go to as well, so we just decided to go here isntead. However, we forgot to figure in the fact it was winter. There were some cool trees and plants, but not much color or life there at the time. Haha...oops. After the gardens we went back to the hotel, I packed up my stuff, and we went out to grab a quick lunch. Pizza again- yum! We had to rush a little because unfortunately it was time for me to get back to the hotel and leave for the airport.

Leaving my parents was very sad, as I had such an amazing time with them in Spain (and Jilly), and I knew I would not be seeing them for over 2 months. It was a little hard to go back to my life in Sevilla after being with them for a week, but I got back into the swing of things pretty quickly. My flight back from Madrid to Sevilla was fine, until the airline lost my luggage! I spent like 2 hours in the airport figuring it out, with the end result being that they had no idea where my bag was, and they would deliver it soon. LOVELY. It was not the most fun two days until they finally delivered my bag on Wednesday.

Overall, the trip was absolutely amazing. I wish my family could come back!! After I got back though, I only had 4 days until my friends and I headed off to Barcelona, which I was VERY excited for!! We ended up having a really great time there, and I will blog about that later in the week. For now, I think I am pretty much all blogged out. Sorry it took me so long to get my blogs written- I feel like I've been so busy lately!! But now I FINALLY finished, so I hope you all enjoyed it!! There will be lots more pictures and stories to tell from their trip when I get home :)

BESOS, Jess