Posts Tagged ‘Spain’

The last time we were in Madrid we missed a few fun things to do, so this time we made sure to do them! The first is known as “Churros con Chocolate”, which as you can see is a delicious savory donut (which is not covered in sugar like in the US) and a pot of very thick hot chocolate, almost like a pudding. It is served for breakfast and is oh-so-delicious. (more…)

We had a very pretty flight from Istanbul to Barcelona, flying over Greece and Italy. The public transportation is really good in Barcelona, so we got the bus and then the metro to our hostel and pretty much crashed.

This was a good thing because I had to be up early the next morning for something I had been dreading…a trip to the dentist!  Before I left the US I had some trouble with a tooth.  There wasn’t time to get it taken care of and it only hurt very rarely, so I didn’t worry about it too much.  But as we traveled around Europe I was having pain pretty frequently.  I thought long and hard about where to go to the dentist and decided that Spain was the best choice – after all, I know some Spanish, the costs there are reasonable, and they even seem to have something of a medical tourism thing going on, which gave me confidence that they would do a good job.

It ended up being a pretty interesting experience.  The dental office I went to looked brand new and was lit a little like a nightclub.  At least, a nightclub with a bunch of dental stations.  The office staff spoke quite a lot of English and the dentist spoke a little.  They got right down to business and ended up giving me three fillings!  I was so happy to have this taken care of!

 

So I know it’s been an incredibly long time since our last post, and a LOT has happened since then, but since we’re in a very, very pretty place right now and I need to get out and do some sightseeing those summaries will just have to wait a little longer.  We’ve had a rotten time figuring out where to go and especially where to stay recently, to the point that we’ve wasted hours putting together plans only to have them go bad, internet not working in multiple locations, and on and on and on.

So today we’re going exploring!

But I do have a long overdue set of pictures of the fabric we bought in Spain for the wedding quilt.  This is some of my favorite fabric yet!!!  It really reminds me of Spain and although I’m not sure where it was manufactured it wasn’t in the USA.  The colors are pretty amazing too.

After a getting briefly lost on our way out of Barcelona (thanks everyone else for fixing that one!) we had a long but uneventful drive to Madrid and got rid of the car on our way into town.  Madrid has a really great metro system (the best one we’ve seen so far) and so it was much easier to get around that way than with the car in the city.

We were hungry after our long drive, so after getting our friends checked into their hotel we set out in search of something to eat.  We found a type of restaurant I hadn’t seen before.  It was a place where they had a bunch of sandwiches, pastas and salads all ready to buy and take home, but you could have them put it on a nice plate and eat it there if you wanted.  Genius!  After dinner, Justin and I headed over to the same hostel that we had stayed in on our first trip to Madrid and got settled in.

The next day was a sight-seeing marathon!  We saw parks, museums, buildings, the big bullfighting arena, and somehow still had enough energy to go out in the evening!

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We arrived in Barcelona and went right to the hotel to meet up with our good friends from home.  This was so exciting!  We got 4 whole days traveling with them and it was glorious!  The hotel we stayed at in Barcelona was quite a bit more pricey than we’ve been used to, but we were excited to have our own bathroom and a really comfy bed for a couple of nights.

We went out and tasted some of the food and nightlife in the neighborhood we were staying in.

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We couldn’t wait to get back on the road to see Barcelona.  We had heard that it was a really cool, funky city – but we were even more excited to see John & Cynthia who decided to meet up with us there and tour the city!  It was unfortunately not fated to be as easy as it sounds.  After our wonderful date at El Buey, we went right back to the dorm and crashed; we woke up in the morning and realized that we still had one more night left in Madrid before our bus left for Barcelona.  No worries, I said, and went down to the desk to ask for another night at our hostel.  They were full!  It was quite a surprise to me since not a single room we’d been in there had ever been full and now they tell us there is not even one more bed for us to take the next night.  And we had to check out in an hour!  So I ran back up to the dorm, awakened Hazel, and started looking for another place to stay.  I wanted a private room to ensure we got some good rest before going out on the town in Barcelona, and booked it at a nearby hostel.

So we got on the Metro, made it to our proper stop, and began walking looking for the street.  Did I mention that streets change names nearly every block in some parts of Madrid?  We ended up taking a wide circle around the hotel, with all our worldly possessions on our back.  It was frustrating!  We were both afraid for our personal security, since we looked like (er, were) lost foreign tourists with all their worldly possessions on their backs.

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Hazel decided that for my birthday she would get me a nice night out in Spain – complete with Flamenco Dancing!  This has been something I’ve been really into since I saw a show in Ithaca back in 2005.  So I was stoked!  It turned out to be the perfect evening.  We started out the night at the restaurant “El Buey” – a favorite Hazel found on SpottedByLocals.com, a site that’s half TripAdvisor and half blog with entries by locals from the area.  We love this site!  Anyway, back to our date.  The specialty of the house is cook-it-yourself OX!  They bring 1kg of ox tenderloin sliced thinly (along with patatas fritas of course) and ceramic plates heated to a really high temperature.  Meat goes on plate, and voila!

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So even though we had just arrived in Madrid the day before we decided to take a little bus ride out of the city (about an hour) and head to Toledo.  We spent most of the morning running around to every bus station in Madrid, buying our onward tickets to Barcelona and then trying to find the right bus, but we eventually found it and had an uneventful ride out to Toledo.

And we were glad we went because the town was really beautiful!  We had a nice fixed menu lunch and walked around the town all afternoon.  We explored the Jesuit church and went up the bell tower to get some great views out over the town.  The town is made up of lots of narrow, winding streets with cool stone buildings lining them and was so scenic for a long walk.  The cathedral was pretty pricey to go into, so we ended up just walking around the outside, but we got some good pictures of the stonework.

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We had a fairly easy flight getting to Madrid from NYC and a very easy trip to our hostel on the (very clean, very spacious) metro.  The time difference and lack of sleep on the flight caught up to us though, so we took a nice nap for a couple of hours.

Since then we’ve managed to have some tapas (delicious!), wander around a bit, plan the next day or so (think we’ll head to Toledo and we’re going to see a flamenco show!), and see an incredibly awesome live jazz show just two blocks from where we’re staying!  We’ve also been pleased because even though the language here is a little different than in South America it seems like we can understand people pretty well and they can understand us.  So all in all, Spain has been good to us in the first 12 hours we’ve been here.