day one/two: madrid

after thinking long and hard about how to blog our spain trip, i decided to do it day-by-day to be sure that i cover everything and keep the posts (relatively) short.

we spent most of the first day traveling. we left slc at 7:00am on tuesday and got into madrid at 10:00am wednesday. our flight from the usa to madrid was mostly uneventful, except for our 1/2 hour layover in houston...which left us running across the airport to catch our plane to newark. the flight from houston to newark was the best because it was a bigger plane and relatively empty.

the flight from newark to madrid was loooooooong, but luckily we were able to sleep most of that one because it was nighttime. a little advil pm may have helped in that process, too. (ps - sleeping on planes is NOT fun. i'm sure you already knew that.)

once in madrid (and all settled into our hotel), we went to the royal palace. unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of the inside because they didn't allow pictures. in fact, pictures weren't allowed in a lot of the places we went to. bummer.

tio pepe (on the way to the royal palace). apparently tio pepe is the best selling brandy in the world. who knew?

royal palace.


(i think this is) the royal theater. i'll have to ask tyler later.

after seeing the royal palace (you should google image it because the inside was insane), we went to the plaza mayor for tapas and drinks.

(now, i need to teach you a little something about spain spanish. they speak with a theta, meaning that ci, ce, and z are prononuced "th." so plaza is "platha," etc. it sounds like everyone has a lisp. seriously! rumor has it that one of spain's kings really did have a lisp, so he changed the way they spoke, adding the theta, so that he wouldn't sound funny. is it true? we don't know. does it sound good? sure!)

the plaza mayor of a city in spain is like it's main city square. the plaza mayor in madrid is very famous. (ask rick steves.)

this particular plaza mayor is not accessible by car. you walk in through one of these archways.
the best way to describe tapas is that they are like appetizers. as part of their culture, spaniards bar-hop, eating tapas and drinking. we had calamari and a spanish tortilla, as well as some bread. bread in spain is very, very good!
and that ends day one/two in madrid!

:)