day five: toledo and consuegra

a second (and last) very sad thing happened in segovia - i forgot to tell you about it. tyler and i bought a brand new nikon coolpix touch screen camera for me to use in spain...and we forgot the charging cord. needless to say, my camera died in segovia. the rest of the pictures are tyler's doing. up to this point, i'd been mixing them up.

holy toledo! we spent the fifth day of our trip in toledo. toledo is where tyler and i spent our big bucks...we splurged and bought two lladros.

the first is called "the soul of spain." it's a beautiful flamenco dancer. i just couldn't pass it up. i figured we're not going to be in spain again for a loooooooooong time, so why not?
the second is called "missionaries." i thought this piece was really cool because lladro, a non-lds company, is making these. because both tyler and his dad served in spain, we decided to get this one. maybe our son(s) will serve in spain?
toledo is unique because it is surrounded on three sides by a river. this is the best picture we had that shows this.
one of the streets in toledo.
cathedral in toledo. there was a catholic children's conference going on in this cathedral, which was interesting to see.

wiki picture.
el greco's "disrobing of christ" (one of his most famous works) is in the sacristy of this cathedral.
after spending time in toledo, we went to consuerga. (i won't mention that the lladro salesman gave us very round-about directions to get here. suffice it to say that ocana will probably be the jeffs' least favorite city in spain.) this part of the trip was COOL. i don't know why i was so excited about this. i guess i'm nerdy? anyways, consuegra is where the don quixote windmills reside. how cool to see something so famous! (ps - there are 12 and they were used to grind wheat.)
they even had don quixote's trail marked. i should have bought a souvenir here. dang!

and lastly...consuegra means "with mother-in-law." here's a picture of me with mine.
fun fact: suegra is also the word they use for the butt of bread...because no one wants it. ha ha ha.

:)

day four: el escorial and segovia

on day four we ventured out of madrid and went to el escorial and segovia.

el escorial is the historical residence of the king of spain and is located in san lorenzo del escorial (northwest of madrid). here are some pictures (again, none from inside).


the coolest part of this palace is that most of spain's royalty are buried here in what is called "the pantheon of the kings." even the current king and queen have "spots" picked out. here's a wikipedia picture.
after spending a good part of the day at el escorial, we headed over to segovia (just north of madrid). segovia is famous for it's aqueduct.
plaza mayor.
the cathedral in segovia. (you can imagine that we saw lots of cathedrals...)
the alcazar. apparently the exterior of this fortress/palace is copied from a castle in germany, which is the castle that disneyland copied for it's famous castle. (i think the largest resemblance is the towers.)
view of segovia from the top of alcazar (including the cathedral in the center).
we were able to take pictures in the alcazar, so here's one.
another view from alcazar.
i would say that segovia was one of my favorite places in spain, but a lot of the places we went were awesome. more pictures to come tomorrow!

:)

day three: madrid

our second day in spain (third day of our trip) was spent in madrid.

a very sad thing happened on this day. my chi hair straightener died a very hot death. the converter we brought with us (come to find out) didn't work. sad! my straightener got so hot that the plastic around the ceramic plates melted. this meant i had to wear my hair pulled back/curly the entire trip.

we did a session in the madrid, spain temple thursday morning. the funny thing is - the session was in english! there were more english speakers there than spanish speakers. i felt bad for the two spaniards that had to wear head phones in their own temple.

it's a pretty temple.

we also enjoyed all of the funny signs spain has to offer. this was one of my favorite. it's their "exit" sign. i call it the running man.

don't hold the door, don't fall in between the train and the platform, and don't pull the door open, respectively.
the "hulk" don't-cross-now sign.
after spending some good time at the temple, we went to the prado museum. word has it that it's second only to the lourve.
obviously we weren't allowed to take pictures in there, but i got to see originals of the following...



...among others. it was really quite fun to see the pictures i learned about at BYU.

after the prado, we headed across town to go to a bull fight. the bull fight was...quite the experience.
outside.
inside.
the matadors.
and now, bull fighting in a nutshell.
step one: irritate the bull.
step two: spear the bull in the neck. (the idea is to weaken the bull's neck so it can't lift it's head...)
step three: spear the bull...again.
step four: fight the bull. step five: stab the bull in the heart. (with the bull's head weakened, the bull fighter stabs the bull in the heart through the top, in between the shoulders.)
on the way home (after the bull fight and dinner), i took a picture of the stadium where the real madrid play soccer. our hotel was really close to the stadium.
day three over! needless to say, it was a busy day.

:)

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!

:)