Weekend in Madrid Spain

It sounds very jet-setting to fly off to Spain for a weekend, but it wasn't quite like that. Liz, my sister for those of you who don't know, needed to leave Russia to renew her visa and we thought it would be a great opportunity to see each other, so we picked a destination that was do-able for both of us. Thankfully a brand new low-cost carrier just started a route between my city and Madrid, and the round trip is only about 60Euros, so it was an affordable break for me.

I had a friend stay with the kids in our apartment for the weekend and they all had a blast! I returned to tales of Ice Cream, trips to the beach, and even a trip to the beach-front-McDonald's to go inside and play on the play structure! (Mom, is a real killjoy, you can imagine, and doesn't do the play structure thing... or even McDonald's here, except once, I think.) In any case, everyone had a good weekend. Liz and I got to hang out and visit and see a bit of Madrid. I was getting sick as I headed out of town and didn't know it so there was a bit of a damper on my weekend, but we still made it worthwhile and got to explore and.... MOST importantly, visit Starbucks!!! (ahem... several times)

One fun thing we did, was get our boots polished. The very nice fellow in the picture spoke no English but managed to communicate that he had moved to Spain from Equador, so we fondly referred to him as "Equador". He did a great job and was a good sport when I took video footage of him polishing Liz's boots (if ya wanna see it, I have to check my blackmail status with Liz before I will release it...)




We happened to be there on the anniversary of a Subway massacre that happened in Madrid in the recent past, and there were large "manifestations" of people, reportedly one and a half million - but we didn't seem to notice any especially large crowds... we saw where they were setting up for the big memorial-"celebration" (all the words in quotes are things that our tour guide used... totally cracked us up!) but apparently missed the big shindig. I do remember waking to the really loud symphony music they were using to test out the sound system for the event. After I got home, I had a chanced to read about the event that happened in 2004, click on the blue link above to read about it for yourself.




We went on a three hour bus tour and I managed to take an entire gig of pictures (many of which were no good because of the blur from the movement of the bus, or the inevitable reflection on the windows) but they are all of buildings and streets, so I won't post any here, instead I will save them for torturing people with never-ending slideshows of "my trip to Spain"! LOL actually, I will probably use several of them for my one-point-perspective art lessons at school (always the teacher...) Back to the story: During the bus tour we stopped at a tourist-trap store and got to see a five minute demonstration of flamenco dancing. Liz and I were disappointed that the dancer didn't have the traditional dress on, but I made up for it by getting (at a cheaper store,of course) a dress-up flamenco dress for the girls - now I can see my very own flamenco dancing anytime I like.


The city was beautiful at night, reminded me of all the cool old buildings in St. Petersburg, lit up at night. But I wasn't feeling so hot, so by the end of the day I was pretty wiped out and we didn't do much. The first night there we went to TGIFridays which was a blast for me, since it has been ages since I ate American style food in a restaurant. They have TGIFriday's in Russia, so it wasn't quite as much of a thrill for Liz. It was fun to eavesdrop on all the English-speaking tourists sitting around us, though. Throughout the night we were reminded that we were downtown; we heard sirens and partying all night long... Thank you God for my one deaf ear - I just turned over, blocked out the noise and went to sleep! Speaking of sleep, the rooms had radiators for heating, and that was a real treat for me too, since we mostly use a ton of heavy blankets and warm jammies, (ever since my astronomical electricity bill, due to the use of electric heaters that are subsequently off limits!)