Hola, Madrid!

After buying our tickets to Madrid, I had buyers remorse. Why? Well, because everyone we know here has gone to Barcelona and we knew no one that had gone to Madrid. There's something to be said about the road less traveled...
Jamie and I borrowed books from the library, did research and planned, and then I began to get excited. Then we found out friends of ours here were going to overlap the days we were in Madrid too. To sum up our trip, it was spectacular! I loved every minute of being in Madrid! It didn't hurt that the weather was amazing either.
Madrid blew away my expectations and I loved, LOVED every minute we were there!!!

We flew to Madrid on Thanksgiving, we arrived at our apartment rental around 5:30pm. Shortly after getting our bags in the place, Jamie's phone rang. It was our friends Rebecca and Matt from Napoli. We had only found out a few weeks before our trip that they, and some of their friends, Alida and Jeremy, would also be in Madrid at the same time. They wanted us to meet up with them for dinner. For Spaniards, dinner typically starts around 9pm or so... Well past our kids bed time, and who am I kidding, well past MY bedtime! But we got lucky and found a place willing to serve a table of 13 around 7pm. So, for Thanksgiving 2011's dinner: Paella and Sangria. It was fantastic!!

First full day in Madrid started off with a metro ride to the Real Madrid Futbol Stadium.

We did the self guided tour and really enjoyed it, it even kept Riann and Lincoln entertained and happy. We walked through the museum of their many, many, MANY trophies, change in uniforms, history of the team, then we made our way to the field, sat in the team's "bench" which was made up of Audi car seats, we walked through the visitors locker room and sat at the press desk. It was a ton of fun!
We took the metro back and visited Pans & Company for lunch (cheap and delicious!), walked around to see Plaza Mayor and let Riann take a carousel ride.

We stopped at what would become our favorite spot in Madrid that afternoon for a snack: Mercado de San Miguel, a covered market that had tons of eateries inside. They had everything from fresh produce to helado (gelato... ice cream), to wine, fresh seafood, sushi, and local specialties.

We walked around Plaza de Orient and Plaza de Espana which had an open air market with a lot of fun things to check out. We took a break and the kids played Angry Birds with Jamie for a while before meeting up with our friends Rebecca and Matt and their two sons again for dinner. We walked around to see the holiday lights already out (lucky us!), went back through Plaza Mayor to see the Christmas Market and let the kids go on the carousel again, and finally, back to Mercado de San Miguel. (See, I told you we loved this place!!) The kids ate helado, the grown ups snacked on sangria and beer and oysters. It was a late night that evening, I think we got back to our apartment at 10:00.

Our second morning in Madrid was a special one... Lincoln's 3rd birthday!!!

Since we didn't have a cake, we started off with breakfast from Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. So American of us, but we don't have either in Italy, nor do we have much variety in Italy, and we knew the kids would be delighted to pick out a special treat. Neither Jamie nor I even really drink coffee, but it was the holiday froufrou drinks that caught my eye and I had to indulge! After "birthday breakfast", we headed to Palacio Real, the royal palace of Madrid.

That took some time to tour, the rooms were magnificent, a dining room that had a table to seat 150.
It was snack time, and since it was on our way to our next stop, we ate at Mercado de San Miguel, again. Seriously, there was such a huge variety to choose from, we never ate the same thing twice. It was such a fun, energetic place to be, and the people were all so very nice, we couldn't go wrong!

And to do something special for the birthday boy, we headed to Museo del Ferrocarril, a train museum my friend Diana had recommended. It is in an old, converted train station and well, birthday boy was so happy and excited, I hardly got any photos of him as he just ran from train to train to train.

He loved it!!! He had such a great time that he ended up falling sound asleep in the stroller on the way to treat ourselves to a spanish specialty: churros con chocolat at an open air market. We headed back to our apartment for some relaxation (and to buy time to get through dinner). We walked over to Plaza de Espana for a snack of chorizo

and continued to walk around and enjoy the beauty of Madrid... oh yes, and one more stop at a famous spot, Chocolateria San Gines for what else but more churros con chocolate.

Hey, we were walking an average of 5 miles a day and how often do we get to visit Madrid??

The following day was museum day. We headed out on the metro and landed ourselves at the Reina Sofia museum.

It was their "free entrance" day, but it was not open just yet. But there was a Starbucks spitting distance from the museum, hence we had a snack.
The main reason we went to the Reina Sofia was to see Picasso's Guernica, and since our kids aren't quite the museum roaming kind of kids, we literally went in and headed directly to the room to see Guernica.

We really checked it out, Riann and Lincoln were both telling us what they saw when they looked at the enormous painting but then exited the museum shortly thereafter. We still had the Prado to go visit! The kids were museumed out so we walked to the beautiful Parco del Retiro. It made for some great photo opportunities, some great street entertainment - music, puppet shows and just a fun afternoon, and a gorgeous day to be outside!

We headed to the metro once again and visited Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, the bullring. It was not bullfighting season, so we only were able to walk around the stadium but it was pretty spectacular!

I doubt we would have gone to see a bull fight, it seems pretty dramatic and well, crazy to watch bull after bull be put to death before our eyes. Not exactly G-rated for Riann and Lincoln either. We finished our afternoon off by walking back to our apartment, seeing some sights along the way and just enjoyed being in Madrid.

Oh yea, and we stopped one more time for churros con chocolat. Don't judge... They were ridiculously delicious!

And as with every trip comes our last full day. We walked over to Jardines del Templo de Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple rebuilt in Madrid, we snapped a few photos as the low battery light appeared on the camera and then moved on to a nearby playground.

We met a lovely and very pregnant American woman there, her son and her father-in-law. Her husband was also in the military and worked at the nearby NATO base. Our kids all played and had a ton of fun together, but their hunger got the best of them and we headed to the Mercado de San Miguel for a snack.

Our last night in Madrid, we opted for variety, American variety, and walked through the doors of TGIFridays. Ironically, our server did not speak any English but he successfully brought us our 17euro burgers. It was another great night in Madrid!

We had to wake up well before the sun in Madrid - the sun doesn't come up in November until about 8am - so it was really, really dark at 7am. Off to the airport to head back to Napoli...
Adios, Madrid, you were fabulous!!!!