We'd been planning it for two years, and it finally happened: the kids and I went to SPAIN! The trip was delayed a year due to Covid, and MJ ended up staying home rather than brave such a long flight, but it was a phenomenal trip for me and the kids.
MJ's wonderful cousin, Shannon (who has visited us many times and is well documented in this blog), has lived in Madrid for the last several years. We were so thankful that she allowed us to stay with her for the first part of our trip, and served as our translator, Uber, and tour guide. The kids and I have priceless memories of our first international experience together, and it's due in large part to her.
Day 1: We flew into Madrid the morning of Good Friday. Shannon picked us up at the airport and brought us to her apartment, which is perfectly located in the Salamanca neighborhood. After we dropped our bags, the kids were excited to check out a Spanish grocery store with her, where they picked out some snacks and treats to keep at the apartment. CC and Sweet Pea were amazed at the machine that fresh-squeezed orange juice for them right in the middle of the produce section!
After a brief nap, we headed out to explore Retiro Park, a large and picturesque park just a few blocks from her apartment. We visited the Crystal Palace (which is pretty much the largest, fanciest, most beautiful greenhouse you could imagine, originally built for the 1887 Worlds Fair in the Philippines).
We also saw the peacock garden, where dozens of peacocks and peahens roam free, showing off for visitors.
After walking, people-watching, and enjoying dinner, we headed to the center of the city to see a Good Friday procession. All during Holy Week, Spanish Catholic churches take their most precious statues, cover them with flowers, candles and jewels, and carry them through the streets on enormous platforms carried by members of their brotherhoods. There are also soldiers on horseback, parades of penitents wearing pointy caps, and hundreds of participants carrying crosses and banners, all to trumpets and rolling drums. Despite the throngs of people lining the streets, we were fortunate enough to get a good view of one of the most well-known processions in Madrid: Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno (Our Lord Jesus the Nazarene). That parish is known for its Black Christ statue (Cristo de Medinaceli) from the early 1600s, which was proudly displayed on the main float.
The procession was awesome, but by the time it finished and we battled the crowds to get back to Shannon's apartment, it was 11 pm. I was concerned about how the kids and I would adjust to the time difference, but they fell asleep immediately, and slept soundly until about 9am. Hooray!
Day 2: Shannon took us on a day trip to Segovia, a medieval town about an hour from Madrid. It was so interesting! We visited the Segovia Cathedral, which dates from the 1500s.
It's where the kids first learned the valuable lesson, "When in Spain, always look up." The ceilings were beautiful! We also saw their procession float, probably from the day before, still covered with flowers and candles, and on display in a side chapel.
Walking through town, we saw Segovia's enormous section of Roman aqueduct, which blew me away: it's one of the best surviving examples of an aqueduct bridge, and dates back to around the 1st century!
Then we toured the Alcazar de Segovia, a castle that dates back to the 1100s. It's gorgeous, so well-preserved, and has a fascinating history: it was a castle, then a prison, and then a military academy, before becoming a museum. The tilework, paintings and furnishings are beautiful, and show a lot of Moorish influence. One room is lined with carvings of each of the 22 monarchs who ruled there.
The kids enjoyed the armory, where crossbows, suits of armor, and cannons were displayed. There was even a tiny suit of armor that could have fit my three amigos!
We climbed the tower to get an amazing view of Segovia, the cathedral, and the surrounding countryside.
On the way back to Madrid, we stopped at the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, the former summer residence of the kings of Spain. It was built in the 1700s, modeled on France's Versailles, and boasts beautiful and extensive gardens. The kids had the chance to run around and be silly for a while, which they badly needed.
There are 26 enormous fountains throughout the gardens, and in honor of Holy Week, four of them were turned on. They were so impressive -- especially considering they operate purely on gravity, and use all the original pipes and waterworks. It was a great way to end our day, and something we'll be talking about for years.
That night for dinner, Shannon took us to Hot Pot, a restaurant where you cook your own food in pots of broth simmering on special stoves built into the tables. The kids loved it! A kitty robot brought all our raw meat, veggies, and dumplings, and we took turns cooking it all in the two different kinds of broth. Delicious and entertaining!
Bonus: Little Man discovered Aquarius, similar to Gatorade, which immediately became his favorite drink in Spain.
Day 3: Easter Sunday! We got dressed and went to the Basilica of St Francis the Great for Mass. True to what I'd read, it was gorgeous inside, and we were all wowed by our surroundings. Surprisingly, there was no music during Mass. And it wasn't crowded at all (probably because there are 3-4 Catholic churches on every block). The kids were a bit antsy since they couldn't understand anything, but at least we could generally follow along with the order of the Mass.
After Mass, Shannon took us to the palace gardens, which -- not surprisingly -- were beautiful.
Day 4: On Monday, Shannon headed to work, so we were on our own. I booked a walking tour of the historic area of Madrid, and our tour guide, Julio, was awesome! He was full of energy and interesting facts about the city, like how the architect for Teatro Real (the royal theater) secretly shaped it like a coffin, and that Calle del Arenal (Sand Street) got its name from how bodies there were buried in sand. Julio took us to Plaza Mayor (the main square),
Puerta del Sol (where we stood on the "Zero Kilometer" mark, from where all distances/roads in Spain are measured),
La Almudena Cathedral (which is relatively new, only having been consecrated in the 1990s),
and Mercado de San Miguel, the food market, where we lunched on calamari, fruit, and jamon (prosciutto).
We also saw the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the world, Restaurante Botín (from 1725) and the oldest continuously operating shop in the city, Farmacia de la Reina Madre (Pharmacy of the Queen Mother), from 1578!
After we said goodbye to Julio, I was extremely disappointed to realize that we would not be able to go inside the Royal Palace. I hadn't purchased tickets far enough in advance, and the line for walk-up ticket sales wasn't moving at all. I didn't want to waste our last day in Madrid waiting in line, so I cut my losses and let the kids set the tone for the afternoon.
Naturally, they chose to go souvenir shopping. Sweet Pea bought a Madrid sweatshirt; CC chose a flamenco fan, and Little Man -- to no one's surprise -- picked a dagger. Then I took them to a slide park, Toboganes de Madrid Rio. I'm glad we went. The kids were pretty toured out at that point, and this park allowed them to run around, be loud and rambunctious, and blow off some steam. Those slides were steep and fast! Definitely not for little kids, but perfect for my three. I went down a few of them, and I'm lucky that I didn't embarrass myself -- you come flying out the end so fast, it's hard to keep your feet underneath you!
When we got back to Shannon's apartment, she took us to a puzzle store nearby. It was really interesting. They sold board games too, but mostly puzzles -- thousands of them! We bought a Madrid puzzle as a souvenir, but we could have stayed there all day looking at the options.
On the ceilings of the shop ("Always look up!") there were puzzles mounted that were truly enormous. One was particularly impressive, over 24 feet long. It's a collage of the most famous landmarks around the world, and it's 42,000 pieces!
Then we took Shannon and Rafa, her boyfriend, out to dinner. Rafa's family is from Seville, in the Andalusia region of Spain, so we met him at an Andalusian restaurant. The food was delicious, but the company was even better: we lingered late over dinner, and even ordered a huge sampling of desserts, which Rafa decided we should rank in order of deliciousness. I don't even remember which dessert won; I just remember laughter and the kids scoring things extremely precisely ("This one's a 9.999999!") Afterwards, Rafa gave each of us a holy card and a medal from his family's church in Seville, where he had just recently participated in a Holy Week procession. It was a lovely way to end our time in Madrid.
Day 5: On Tuesday morning, we bid a fond farewell to Shannon, and then packed our bags and took the Metro to the train station. Next stop: Barcelona!
No comments:
Post a Comment