Spring Break in Spain

We had a fabulous trip through southern Spain during Spring Break. We began in Madrid, it's a great, not too big city, we felt like we could really walk almost everywhere. Our first day there we began the day like true Spaniards with Churros con Chocolat. It is a delicious treat - super thick hot chocolate with fried dough but it is super rich! And if you're aware of just how much we all love chocolate you understand how rich it is.

We followed Rick Steve's walking tour through the city, only being disappointed that the door to the double secret cookies sold by the nuns had a sign saying no cookies until Monday. The risks of traveling on Easter weekend... We did find what is considered to be the oldest door in Spain, Stef wasn't impressed.

Almudena Cathedral and the palace were both amazing to see from the outside. We decided to wait for the inside of the cathedral until Easter mass and the girls passed on the tour of the palace - they have seen a lot of castles...

After a fabulous tapas lunch we did the museum portion of our day. The Prado is Madrid's version of the Louvre, huge and filled with masterpieces. Most of you know our kids do not always want to spend the whole day in a museum (with Rachel choosing to be the occasional exception). So, we limit our time; we told the girls make sure you see Las Meninas and the Goya paintings and we'll see you in an hour. Then we headed to the Reina Sofia. We went here to see the Guernica painting by Picasso. This is an amazing piece of art and considered to be the most important painting about war ever painted. It is a huge billboard sized painting and Stefanie had learned about it in history so she wanted to go see it. Whenever our children WANT to do something when we are being tourists, we do it, participation is encouraged!

Guernica

We had a great dinner and caught the very end of one of the Good Friday parades at 1030pm. The interesting thing is this parade started at 6pm. We had hoped to see it pass through the square where we were staying before we left for dinner at 8 but clearly we would have had to wait a long time!

Famous sign in Puerto del Sol - the Citizens complained when it was taken down a few years ago so they brought it back!

The next day we spent in Toledo, I had a good advice from my friend Vanessa to take the train for the day and that was perfect. Once we arrived we hopped on the "hop on hop off" bus tour and were able to get a great overview of the city. The best part was the stop at the El Greco View which is an amazing spot that lets you see the whole city of Toledo.

We also toured the amazing cathedral, well worth seeing.

Patiently listening to me read about the cathedral

Then we headed to the Church of San Tome to see El Greco's famous painting  - The Count of Orgaz. Along the way we found a door smaller than Rachel!

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking through Toledo and back to the train. We think it might have been nice to stay in Toledo and take the train to Madrid. The winding streets of Toledo seemed quite charming.

Easter Sunday we headed to Almudena Cathedral for mass. It was a beautiful service and the church was stunning to see too. It was the most passionate homily I have ever heard, I didn't understand it, but it was undeniably passionate.

Afterwards we headed to Carmencita Bar, a trendy little cafe for brunch, out of the way and teeny but also delicious. Then we explored the Templo de Diabod, it's the only intact Egyptian tomb in Europe, it was a gift to the Spainards after they helped Egypt in the 1960s when the Nile was flooding. Who knew?

Our last Madrid activity was a bullfight. This was a controversial choice for our family. Stefanie did not want to go but I didn't want to leave her alone at the hotel. We compromised with inexpensive tickets so we could leave after one fight. Unfortunately Stefanie really did hate it and cried for most of the fight. She's right, it does seem cruel to us and it's hard to understand the culture of what appears to be brutality. The arena wasn't quite full but the crowd was enthusiastic, puffing on cigars and shouting Olé throughout the match. It was fascinating to see once, looking at it from a non-emotional observer point of view. The matadors skills were impressive although the main matador did get caught up with the bull and was tossed in the air a few times. Thankfully he was OK and able to return to finish the fight. Well thankfully for him, for the bull, not so much.

After our three days in Madrid we caught a train early the next morning to Sevilla. This was a fabulous way to go, 2.5 hours by train versus 5+ hours in a car!  We explored two different churches in Sevilla. The Iglesia del Salvador is the second largest church in Sevilla and it was displaying many of the parade "floats" from their Holy Week celebrations.  The largest church is the Cathedral Sevilla, it's the largest gothic cathedral and third largest cathedral in the world! Sevilla Cathedral was amazing and we enjoyed exploring it. We also climbed the ramp to the top of the bell tower. It's a ramp because it is left over from the Muslims and a cleric would ride a donkey up five times a day for the call to prayer.

Later that evening we met the lovely Anna for a flamenco show and dinner. Anna is my cousin Scott's daughter and she is studying in Sevilla for a semester. It was so great to be able to see her and spend time with her. It was also fun for our girls to hear about what studying abroad in college is like from someone who is actually doing it.

The flamenco show was great fun. Anna explained to us that there was a little showmanship and that it wasn't completely a just "in the moment" kind of show but that it was a good example of what flamenco dancing is about. We had dinner at the restaurant on the roof of our hotel with a beautiful view of the Sevilla Cathedral.

The next day we started with a train trip to Cordova to see the Mezquita. It was amazing and well worth the trip. The Mezquita is now a Cathedral. Originally on the site was a Christian church, then when Spain was conquered by the Muslims it was divided into Christian and Muslims halves. But then it was bought by the Muslims and a grand mosque was built. In the 1200s during the Reconquista it was converted to a Roman Catholic church with a cathedral built in the center of the mosque. It is truly amazing to see. First it is huge, second to be inside the mosque and then walk into the cathedral section in the center is actually a little disconcerting. We were all really glad that we had a chance to see it and the girls were glad they had decided to join us!

Muslim altar

Afterwards we headed back to Sevilla. We did more exploring. Seeing the beautiful Plaza de Espana and finding a place for lunch outside of Sevilla University.

After lunch we did a tour of the Alcázar of Sevilla, which is an incredible palace built by the Moorish Muslim kings. The gardens in particular are stunning here and you could spend hours just wandering around the palace and the grounds. For Games of Thrones fans, part of it was filmed here!

That night Anna met us a for a late night tapas dinner. We had plenty of random entertainment as we ate our way through the night. We were eating outside and as we experienced often on our trip, performers would just start singing or playing an instrument and then after 10-15 min would walk around with a hat for a donation. Sometimes it would be a solo performer and sometimes a group, always interesting to watch!

Rachel, Stefanie & Anna

After our two days in Sevilla our site-seeing portion of our trip was drawing to a close but not with out one more stop. We were driving to the beach in Marbella but we just happened to be driving right past the Rock of Gibraltar so of course we visited. We parked in La Linea and walked across the border. The girls thought this was a joke until they watched the couple in front of us get turned away at the border because they didn't have a proper visa. We took the cable car to the top of Gibraltar and enjoyed the beautiful views. I think the girls enjoyed the monkeys even more. There are "cute" little monkeys all over the top of Gibraltar and they really are very cheeky. If you have an exposed bag, bottle, food item, whatever, they snatch it. We were warned on the cable car ride but sure enough not two minutes after we exited a monkey had some guy's bag of cookies. Then later after lunch one grabbed Rachel's drink bottle right out of her hand. That was frustrating for the monkey though, he couldn't get it open!

Rachel & Stefanie - Gibraltar Runway

Spain & England

Our last three days we spent in Marbella, enjoying the beach, relaxing by the pool, reading and playing hearts. This was a fabulous way to end our trip and Marbella is absolutely beautiful. We had gorgeous weather and truly just relaxed.

It got a little cold at dinner so the waiters wrapped us in scarves!

Seaside dinner