Spain Trip!!!

I've been meaning to type up a post to share about our recent vacation for a while now, but we've been pretty busy since we got back. Also, I always find it difficult to tell people about a great trip, because in some sense, it's not possible to explain how wonderful the sites were and what a great time we had. But I will try my best!

Mike and I have been planning almost since we started dating to someday take a trip to Spain. Mike had been there three times before and it is his favorite place to visit. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to cash in some flight miles and Mike was able to get away from the store for 10 whole days at the end of September and we set off for Spain. Because we had used flight miles, we didn't have the ideal pick of flights, and actually ended up with 4 separate flights each way (Cedar Rapids to Chicago; Chicago to Newark; Newark to Lisbon, Portugal; Lisbon to Madrid). We had great flights, but our time between flights was spent running so we didn't mix the next plane. When we got to Lisbon, we ended up having to wait in line for nearly 2 hours to get through customs. Also, we ended up in the line in the middle of a group of people who had just arrived from Angola. It was certainly an interesting experience because we did not understand a word they were saying and they seemed to have different ideas of what it meant to stand in line. But we made it through and got to Madrid in good shape.

We headed right away to our hotel. In Spain, and especially in Madrid, hotels are different. It's not a huge building run by a chain like Marriott or Comfort Inn. Instead, people open up small hotels, maybe on one floor or 1/2 a floor in a building. So we found the hotel, but even though there was a sign on the door, we could not find the button to buzz the desk to let us in. A man stopped to help us figure it out and Mike turned to him and said in Spanish "Tenemos reservaciones", which means "we have reservations." Mike didn't get to complete his thought when the man interrupted and said "No, no, no....no hablo ingles", which in Spanish means "No, I don't speak English"!!

Mike and I looked at each other kind of puzzled and Mike began again more slowly. Eventually we got it figured out, but for the rest of the trip kept laughing about Mike's accent being so bad, his Spanish sounded like English! Fortunately, our Spanish improved the longer we were there.

We stayed most of the nights in Madrid, except for two nights in Segovia. In Madrid we visted parks and museums and saw the bull flighting ring. At the museums we saw some really great famoous works of art, including a very large painting by Picasso called "Guernica". Because we used our handy Rick Steve's guideobook, we were able to visit both the Prado museum and Reina Sofia museum for free! We spent our evenings on the Plaza Mayor, a central square, where we sat and listened to street musicians and watched all sorts of interesting people walk by.
Segovia is a beautiful city with winding mideviel streets, an ancient Roman aquaduct, a grand cathedral, and a wonderful castle "El Alcazar". Visiting castles was high on my priority list and this one definitely impressed. We also visited a royal palace called "La Granja" near Segovia, which had a HUGE garden. We thought it would be fun to visit the part of the garden where they had a hedge labyrinth. I've always wanted to walk in one of those in person. Because it was fall, the hedges weren't very filled in and we could see through pretty well, so thought we'd have no problem. We easily found our way to the center, but then struggled to find our way out. We started to get a little nervous and then increasingly nervous as we visioned being stuck in this park overnight (seriously it was so big, I'm not sure anyone would have found us for awhile). But we did eventually find the exit and decided we won't try that again unless we have a ball of yarn!!! We had a very relaxing time in Segovia, even though we did clock in over 22,000 steps on the pedometer one of those days!! But we needed the exercise considering our daily breakfast consisted of a chocolate croissant, espresso, and fresh-squeezed orange juice :)

We also took a few daytrips from Madrid, one to Toledo which is another medieviel city with a very strong Moorish (Arabian) influence. It has a very large magnificent cathedral and is also home to a smaller church that houses in the original spot a very famous and beautiful painting by the painter "El Greco". It was beautiful and we loved getting lost in the winding streets. We took picture after picture because around every corner seemed to be one more beautiful street scene.

We also took a trip to Manzanares el Real. This was our most adventurous, since it's not listed in any of our guide books and we weren't exactly sure we'd be able to figure out how to get there, but I am soooo glad we went. The trip was smooth and we were able to communicate well enough in Spanish to find the bus we needed to take and where it would pick us up to go back to Madrid. Let me tell you, this castle was amazing!! It is considered one of the best preserved castles in Spain. I wanted to stay there forever! Plus, we happened to go on some sort of national tourist day, so we didn't have to pay to get in!

Overall, we had a fabulous time! This was the most time we've spent together continuously since our honeymoon and our first/longest major vacation since we opened the store. It was a great way to belatedly celebrate our 5th anniversary!!!

Check out more of our pictures here.